by David P. Greisman

There actually wasn’t much disagreement among the three official judges when it came to the opening half of Saturday night’s bout between Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson.

While Peterson and his camp feel they deserved to win those rounds due to Peterson’s ability to elude Garcia and make him miss, the judges consistently favored Garcia.

All three — Don Ackerman, Kevin Morgan and Steve Weisfeld — gave rounds 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 to Garcia.

The only disagreement was in Round 3. Ackerman and Morgan had it 10-9 for Peterson, while Weisfeld was in the minority at 10-9 for Garcia. In fact, Weisfeld gave all six rounds of the first half of the bout to Garcia.

It was in the second half of the bout that the judges began to differ more.

Ackerman and Morgan had Garcia winning Round 7. Weisfeld was in the minority, scoring it 10-9 for Peterson. All three judges scored Round 8 for Peterson.

Ackerman and Morgan had Peterson winning Round 9. Weisfeld was in the minority, scoring it 10-9 for Garcia.

Ackerman and Weisfeld had Peterson winning round 10. Morgan was in the minority, scoring it for Garcia. All three judges scored rounds 11 and 12 for Peterson.

Peterson swept rounds 8-12 on Ackerman’s card, won four of the last five rounds on Morgan’s card, and five of the last six rounds on Weisfeld’s card.

It still wouldn’t be enough. Ackerman had it a draw at 114-114, but both Morgan and Weisfeld had Garcia the narrow victor, 115-113.

If you were to make those outliers agree with the majority, then it actually would’ve been a draw on all three cards. Ackerman’s tally would’ve remained the same, while Morgan’s would’ve gone from 115-113 Garcia to 114-114. Weisfeld was in the minority three times (twice favoring Garcia, once favoring Peterson), and so his 115-113 score for Garcia also would’ve changed to 114-114.

Similarly, if we were to take a score from “majority rules” — in which a fighter gets the edge from at least 2 of the 3 judges for that round — then there would’ve been six rounds for Garcia and six rounds for Peterson, again leaving a 114-114 score.

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com