The WBC wants an increase in the number of ringside officials scoring the May 18 undisputed clash between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk; WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman hopes video replay will be in use for Fury-Usyk: "Controversy in a fight of this magnitude would be unacceptable"
Monday 19 February 2024 11:02, UK
The WBC is proposing that the number of ringside judges for Tyson Fury vs Oleksandr Usyk should be increased from three to five, or even six.
Fury, the WBC heavyweight champion, will box Usyk, the unified WBO, WBA and IBF titlist, on May 18 after the bout was postponed when Fury sustained a cut in sparring, having been initially scheduled for February 17.
World title fights are normally scored by three ringside officials. But WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman believes that, because this undisputed heavyweight championship fight is so important for boxing, more judges should be introduced.
Sulaiman revealed to Sky Sports that he wants five or six officials scoring the fight ringside.
"That is my recommendation. We will see," he said.
"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," he explained. "We have found through fights done in this system that the more officials that score a fight, the less possibility of a wrong decision.
"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. But 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."
While that concept is at a developmental stage, Sulaiman is confident that video replays could be used for the bout.
"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 WBC president said.
"The initial idea was to put together specific guidelines of the usage of instant replay and we're in that process. 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 made the 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."
