O’Shaquie Foster and Robson Conceicao intend Saturday night to settle the debate as to who’s the better elite super-featherweight, but still swirling around their controversial first bout is the question of how best to document a fight’s activity.

While Foster, many fans and the ESPN broadcast team assessed that the then-champion posted an effective, productive, elusive boxing exhibition on July 6, judges Anthony Lundy (116-112 for Conceicao) and Paul Wallace (115-113 for Conceicao) overruled judge Ronald McNair (116-112 for Foster) and prompted criticism of punch-stat company CompuBox by Top Rank Chairman Bob Arum.

“The CompuBox people weren’t even at the fight,” Arum said of CompuBox figures showing Brazil’s Conceicao landed only 11 percent of his 701 total punches and landed 10 or more punches in just two of 10 rounds. “That’s a fraud. I watched it on TV. I can’t tell exactly what’s landing. … You have to be there to see it. Like the judges are.”

While CompuBox numbers will likely still be leaned upon to enrich the bout’s analysis – by both live broadcasters and print reporters covering the bout – Top Rank President Todd DuBoef says he’s interested in establishing a better way to tally who’s hitting who – how often and how effectively.

“It’s one thing to have technology, but if we’re not using it correctly … ,” DuBoef said.

Rather than having humans enter the punch stats by tapping on a data-entry machine as CompuBox has done for 40 years, DuBoef is intrigued with the idea of leaning on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to compute the punches.

One such A.I. company, Jabbr, is already posting results from fights, measuring punches thrown and landed – as CompuBox does – but also considering if certain landed punches are “high impact” and measuring the percentage of time in a round when a fighter is bringing “pressure” and “aggression.”

In a recent narrow bout, Artur Beterbiev’s majority decision victory over Russian countryman Dmitry Bivol for the undisputed light-heavyweight title, Jabbr reported Bivol out-landed Beterbiev 50-23 in high-impact punches, but Beterbiev possessed a 45% to 39% pressure advantage and 35% to 24% aggression advantage.

Jabbr defines the categories like this: Pressure: walking forward and forcing your opponent backwards, putting opponent on the ropes or in the corner, fighting at close range without clinching. Aggression, throwing punches with high power commitment, throwing punches in combinations, intimating and/or ending exchanges.

CompuBox tracks total punches, power punches and jabs.

Defending his work, CompuBox creator Bob Canobbio told BoxingScene following Conceicao-Foster I that his tallying is accurate.

“First of all, we’re not the official scorers. We provide a barometer of what’s happening in the ring. And what the announcers do with the numbers is up to them,” Canobbio said.

DuBoef argues the potential for A.I. in reporting punch stats is stark since it can report the data directly to broadcasters, fans and even judges if that could be approved.

“They all aren’t being given the same data set, which is stupid” DuBoef said. “Show it to everybody. The data has to be accurate, not subjective. That’s where A.I. kicks in … and then communicate it to everybody.”

DuBoef elaborated that judges can consider what they just saw during the most recent round, be handed the A.I. report, consider both and then turn in their score.

Former veteran judge and current NABF President Duane Ford said he’s skeptical about adding A.I. reports to the judge’s ringside opinion.

“I don’t know if you can trust A.I., and I don’t think the judges need it – it might intimidate them more,” Ford said. “Judging a fight is simple if you can concentrate. I wonder of A.I. can be manipulated, and who better than a judge can score the effect of a punch?”

Ford advocates that states rotate from a variety of quality judges from both the U.S. and the world as they host world-title fights. Those highly qualified judges – with their human eyes – know best how to score a fight, Ford argues.

“The point is not the velocity of the punch. The point is the effectiveness of the punch,” Ford said. “How did it affect the opponent? A.I. can recognize the effect of a punch, but to put some camera in there … you’re losing the element of what boxing has always been. And I’m a traditionalist.

“If a fighter lands 400 punches and the other lands 200, does that mean the guy with 400 won? No. The effect of the punch on a fighter … if the guy throwing less punches is countering and throwing the active guy off his rhythm, that’s more effective. It’s about the effect, not the number.”

Ford is pressing for the sport to adopt a new 10-9 scoring system during rounds where there is not a knockdown.

He said judges should be able to score those rounds as 10-9, close, 10-9, moderate, or 10-9, decisive. Although that proposal and the WBC’s push for a five- or six-judge panel have not been adopted, Ford contends that considering that will allow judges to form a more accurate scorecard.

In the meantime, Conceicao-Foster will proceed as it did before – with a three-judge panel and CompuBox reporting its numbers separately for perspective.

“We don’t have an answer yet (about how A.I. technology will be fully implemented), but it’s an important piece to modernizing the sport,” DuBoef said.