TYSON FURY’s undisputed clash with Oleksandr Usyk could feature a major change to judging protocol, should WBC chief Mauricio Sulaiman have his way.
The duo’s rescheduled showdown for all the heavyweight marbles will take place in Saudi Arabia on May 18 after a horror cut in sparring scuppered their proposed February 17 clash.
GETTYTyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk will fight for all the heavyweight marbles in May[/caption]
EPAThe pair’s historic showdown was postponed due to a cut in sparring for Fury[/caption]
WBC president Maurico Sulaiman hopes to bring in extra judges and instant replay for the fightMARK ROBINSON
The Riyadh rumble will crown the first undisputed heavyweight champion in the four-belt era and the first since Lennox Lewis nearly 25 years ago.
And the magnitude of the fight – which has been over two years in the making – has WBC president Sulaiman wanting the introduction of extra ringside judges to avoid any dodgy decisions ruining the mega-bout.
He told Sky Sports: “Boxing is a sport in which change is very difficult to get. We’re purists, traditionalists, we don’t want changes.
“I will continue to make the proposal. Some like the idea, some of the people in the decision-making process. We will see.
“We had proposed to use five judges or six judges.
“However that was not considered. It did not happen. I would still recommend [it].
“We do have a remote scoring system which is used for training and evaluating ring officials from all over the world. They score live in the WBC system that we developed.
“We have found through fights done in this system that the more officials that score a fight, the less possibility of a wrong decision.
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“Anybody can have a bad night. If you have one judge have a bad night and the two others get it correct, you still save the fight.
“You have two judges with a difficult fight and then one round can shift the whole result.”
Sulaiman is adamant having more eyes on the fight would eliminate the possibility of one bad scorecard causing chaos.
He continued: “If you have more officials then the possibility of a wrong score goes to a minimum. But we will see.
“That’s the only intention to make sure there’s no controversy.
“Now we have the biggest fight in 25 years in the heavyweight division. So we have to try to do our best.”
Sulaiman, additionally, hopes to introduce video replays for the fight in a bid to further help referees and ringside officials.
He said: “I believe it will happen, now that the fight has been postponed until May 18, three months from now, we will look into it.
“The initial idea was to put together specific guidelines of the usage of instant replay and we’re in that process.
REUTERSMauricio Sulaiman also wants to bring in video replays for the Riyadh rumble[/caption]
“So we’re going to work with the producers of the feed to see what equipment and what communications are needed, what the review panel will be, just go into details.
“As an example, we did instant replay in the UK with Charlie Edwards and [Julio Cesar] Martinez and we just did instant replay in Fury-Ngannou when Fury was cut.
“The referee he didn’t see any action that cut, ruled it a punch and then the British Boxing Board of Control and myself looked at the screen, the big screen in the stadium and saw the head butt so we called it officially a headbutt.
“But the idea of having the possibility of reviewing a major controversial happening inside the ring, to make the right decision, the right call at the time is basically it.
“To have the absolute certainty that there will not be a controversy. That in a fight of this magnitude would be absolutely unacceptable.”