Tim Bradley's Win over Marquez Shows Right Call Can Be Made in Close Fights

Just minutes after his split-decision defeat against Timothy Bradley on Saturday night, Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez was singing a familiar tune.

"I've been robbed six times in my career," Marquez told media at the post-fight press conference. 

"I came to win, I felt I did win but the judges took it away from me."

You can understand the frustration, and particularly so in the heat of the moment and after a fight that most felt was close and competitive, but otherwise non-controversial.

Attempting, as Marquez seemed to be trying, to draw comparisons between this fight, and Bradley's highly disputed win over Manny Pacquiao last June, is a fools exercise. And it has no basis in reality. 

 In a survey of boxing media after the fight only 11 of 78 felt that Bradley didn't win the fight, and amongst those only four scored the bout for Marquez and seven scored a draw. 

That's a pretty clear-cut consensus, and it shows that however else Marquez may feel, he wasn't robbed on Saturday night. He can gripe that he did enough to win, but closeness alone doesn't mean that someone didn't get a fair shake with the judges.

There exists a sort of knee-jerk reaction amongst boxing fans—and we'll explore why in a minute—that every close fight can be called a robbery. A lot of that has to do with being a fan and carrying a rooting interest into the fights.

It's natural—if you were pulling for Marquez on Saturday night—to feel he got the short end of the stick when the cards were read. 

In the same way when on Sunday afternoon you jump out of your seat and throw your beer on the floor when your favorite team get's called for pass interference on a crucial play, even though in your heart of hearts, you know it was the right call.

In the case of Bradley vs. Marquez you can even find evidence to support your feeling of disappointment. 

According to Compubox statistics, Marquez landed more power punches than Bradley in nine of the 12 rounds. You can rightly argue that those numbers should count for something.

Overall, the numbers favored Bradley in the fight—he landed 15 more total punches and threw 107 more—and he was the far more active fighter in a majority of the rounds. An average round saw Bradley land 14 of 47 punches, with Marquez connecting on 13 of 38. 

It was just that type of fight. Close, competitive, but with one guy having a slight edge. And that guy had his hand raised.

Judges are human. Like fans, they each come to a fight with their own biases and preferences. Some will favor a fighter who is aggressive—even if he's not landing all his shots—over one who is precise, but more conservative with his output. 

Some judges score punches thrown over punches landed. Some like to see an effective ring general who controls the action and forces his opponent to fight outside his comfort zone.

And still others just score based on the flow of a fight. Who seems to be in control? Who seems to be initiating the action?

It's a difficult job, and it's extremely subjective.

Judges fill out their cards after three minutes of action. They don't have access to replays, or punch stats, and they can only rely on what they saw during a given round. 

Like with any other profession, there are some good judges and some bad ones.

Unfortunately, the bad ones have helped to poison the well to the point that many fans just assume that a verdict they disagree with must've been reached through some untoward means such as incompetence or corruption.

Let's be clear. If the last year and change has taught us anything, it's that even the most seasoned judges can turn in epically bad cards.

CJ Ross—a Nevada boxing judge for over 20 years—inexplicably favored Bradley over Pacquiao last June, and then found a way to make an even worse call by scoring Floyd Mayweather's dominant victory over Canelo Alvarez a draw.

The latter fight, which ultimately led to her stepping down, was not even remotely close. Mayweather was as dominant as we've ever seen him, and you'd have a helluva time finding any observers who scored more than a round—or at most two—for Alvarez. 

The number of people calling for Ross's head in the aftermath of her bad card resembled an angry mob that kept picking up new followers with each village it passed through. 

And it was justified. Her card was horrific and utterly divorced from reality.

Then, just two weeks later, an even more egregious miscarriage of justice took place in Carson, Calif. where Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. got a spectacularly and shockingly bad unanimous decision over Brian Vera.

Again, judges don't have access to Compubox, but it was hard to miss the fact that Vera outlanded Chavez Jr. in eight of the 10 rounds—good for a 51 punch landed punch edge—and more than doubled him in punches thrown to the tune of a whopping 734-328 edge. 

For judge Gwen Adair to score that fight 98-92 for Chavez is a travesty, and she was joined by co-conspirators Marty Denkin (97-93) and Carla Caiz (96-94). The trio managed to deprive Vera—a 31 year old journeyman type fighter—of the biggest win of his career in a fight he clearly won. 

That decision was a robbery. That fight was a travesty.

Had CJ Ross not been, correctly, overruled by Dave Moretti and Craig Metcalfe—who were also guilty of all too close cards—then that result would've been a robbery the boxing equivalent of knocking off a bank. 

You can disagree with the verdict this past Saturday night in Las Vegas. You can can even make a compelling case for why you felt Marquez deserved to have his hand raised over Bradley.

A lot of people would disagree, and they could make equally compelling cases. It was just that type of fight.

It was close and competitive, but it was no robbery. 

And it showed that judges can get it right, even when a fight is close.