Sultan-Caraballo: strange scoring

The smoke still hasn’t cleared over the scoring of the WBO Intercontinental bantamweight championship bout between Jonas Sultan and previously undefeated Carlos Caraballo last Sunday. Though the former world title contender Filipino scored four official knockdowns in the 10-round match, he won a unanimous decision by only one point in each of the judges’ scorecards, 94-93. That smells funny.

If you look at all three scorecards, the judges gave six rounds to Caraballo, and only four to Sultan, which is improbable. Sultan was clearly dominant. Two of the judges gave Caraballo Rounds 1, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10; the other awarded the Puerto Rican Rounds 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8. (Each fighter scored a knockdown in Round 3, so it should have been even.) Remember, a knockdown is an automatic 10-8 round. Let’s subtract the dubious knockdown given to Caraballo in the third round. All other rounds being even, the three additional knockdowns would have put Sultan up by six points. So for the judges, Sultan seems to have lost every round he did not score a knockdown in.

How can they get away with this? First of all, nobody really pays attention to who these judges are, so they can hide in relative anonymity. Second, it is usually hard to pin blame on just one of them. In executions by lethal injection, three people activate the switch which kills the prisoner, so no one goes home knowing he killed another man. Third, judges are hired by promoters, and there is very little regulation on their conduct. Promoters want their own fighters to win, naturally. And in this case, Sultan’s lunging style caused him to lose his balance, which, coupled with a punch from his opponent, may (intentionally) be interpreted as a sign that he’s hurt.

It’s rare that judges get penalized for incompetence. On such a rare occasion, Adelaide Byrd was informally suspended after a dubious decision in 2017. Byrd scored the Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin fight 118-110, inexplicably giving Alvarez 10 of the 12 rounds over the unbeaten middleweight champion Golovkin. Even Oscar dela Hoya wondered out loud how his fighter could have won by that much. CJ Ross, a judge in Nevada, left boxing after submitting an even scorecard for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul Alvarez fight, nearly staining the former’s unbeaten record. If you watch that fight, Mayweather was the clear winner. In this case, Sultan won – barely – so the judges can claim no harm was done and sweep it under the rug.

Here’s the predicament now for Sultan, who deserves a second world title fight after losing to Jerwin Ancajas for the IBF super fly title in 2018. All the big guns in his weight class already have fights scheduled. WBC champion Nonito Donaire Jr. has a mandatory defense against Reymart Gaballo on Dec. 11.  Naoya Inoue is slated to meet Aran Dipaen also in December for the IBF and WBA belts. WBO king John Riel Casimero has a date with Paul Butler. If Sultan doesn’t fight right away, he loses momentum and may get lost in the shuffle again. Top Rank, which signed Caraballo days before he fought the Filipino, will demand a rematch. And we’ve all seen what could happen there.

Jonas Sultan has been patient with his opportunities. At 29, time is not yet a factor, but it soon will be. He deserves to be a world champion. A rematch with Caraballo puts him back in the lion’s den, where nothing less than a knockout will secure victory. It would be better to get him a world title shot soonest.