By: The Pod Index, LLC

On Saturday November 9th in Corpus Christi Texas, Demetrius Andrade won the vacant WBO Junior Middleweight Title by split decision over Vanes Martirosyan.  The announcers were critical of the scoring, especially of Alvarez, as they felt Andrade won convincingly.  The judges scores were as follows:

Don Griffin:       114-113 for Andrade

Jessie Reyes:   117-110 for Andrade

Javier Alvarez:  115-112 for Martirosyan

When breaking down the round-by round scores, we actually see that in 6 of the 12 rounds, at least 2 of the judges had Martirosyan winning. The first round was 10-8 on all 3 score cards.  Therefore, under the consensus scoring system, Martirosyan would have won 114-113. 

The announcers tend to sway the viewer's opinion during a fight, often without the viewer realizing it. Announcers and fans are watching instant replays, discussing the fight with each other, and coming to conclusions about who is winning together -- this is known as "Group Think".

On the other hand, the 3 official judges are watching the bout in a vacuum, with no one to discuss the fight with, no one to bounce ideas off, and no assurance that they are even close to the other 2 judges' or the announcers' scores.

This was a difficult fight to judge, and as the round by round scores indicate, Martirosyan did enough in 6 of the 12 rounds to win on at least 2 of the 3 judge's cards.

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