Just how crazy was the Pacquiao/Bradley decision?
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, June 11, 2012
Even if you have no interest in boxing (like me) you’ve heard about the bizarre decision by the judges of the Manny Pacquiao/Tim Bradley fight on Saturday night. Despite nearly everybody believing Pacquiao won the 12-round fight convincingly, two of the three judges gave the fight to Bradley prompting disbelief among observers. This caused me to wonder just how unlikely such a decision was. (Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about boxing and didn’t watch the fight. If I henceforth sound completely ignorant regarding the sport, you know why.)
In order to determine this I wanted to get an estimate of how likely it was for the rational judge to score a particular round for either fighter. I found 18 reporters of varying reputation that scored the fight round-by-round. Here’s how many of those people gave each round to Bradley.
Rd 1: 8 Rd 2: 2 Rd 3: 0 Rd…