No VAR on the Ring: When a 118-110 Scorecard Decides a Career

On the night of September 16, 2026, at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the cheers died in the instant the ring announcer read the final scorecard. Gennady Golovkin and Saúl "Canelo" Álvarez had just gone twelve breathless rounds. What set the arena ablaze was not the punches but a set of numbers: 118-110. Judge Adelaide Byrd scored it for Canelo by ten rounds. Fifteen thousand people in attendance could hardly believe their eyes, and the booing lasted for minutes.

I sat in front of a screen in Saigon, rewinding round by round, noting every jab, every slip. The more I watched, the more I recognized something painfully familiar: on the ring, there is no VAR room to save a wrong call. Football has had technological assistance since 2026. Boxing and combat sports still depend entirely on the eyes of three people sitting at ringside.

Three pairs of eyes, twelve rounds, and an old system

The "10-point must system" was born in the early 20th century and remains the near-universal standard in both boxing and MMA. The winner of a round gets 10 points, the loser 9; with a knockdown or total domination, the score can be 10-8. Three judges sit at three different positions around the ring, each scoring independently, and the totals are added up.

It sounds simple. The problem lies here: "winning a round" is a concept with no precise technical definition. Scoring criteria differ slightly between federations — some prioritize power punches, some count total strikes landed, some let judges weigh "effectiveness" against "ring control." That gap is what I still call the "space of subjective judgment."

In football, when I sit in the VAR room, I am given a clear standard: intervene only for a "clear and obvious error." Yet even that standard is vague, because two people watching the same slow-motion replay can reach opposite conclusions. On the ring, the situation is many times harder, because there is no replay, no line to draw, and no one to consult.

I still remember the feeling of first sitting close to the floor as a referee. The first whistle blown by a camera, I heard it as if the whole world were holding its breath. The silence before a controversial call is something I have never gotten used to, no matter how many times I have been through it.

What made the 118-110 card technically impossible

The statistics from the first Golovkin-Canelo fight show Golovkin threw roughly 703 punches and landed about 218; Canelo threw about 505 and landed about 169. Golovkin was ahead in both volume and accuracy. In the second half, especially from round 7 onward, Golovkin kept moving forward, pinning Canelo to the ropes and landing heavy hooks to the body.

Yet Byrd scored Canelo winning ten rounds. To do that, she had to give Canelo rounds that the other two judges awarded to Golovkin outright. That gap goes far beyond the notion of "a difference of opinion." It deviates from the reality of the fight to a degree that forces the whole system to question itself.

In my profession, such a call is called a "clear and obvious error." The irony is that in football, if a referee makes that error, VAR calls him over to review. In boxing, that card is written into the record, published, and becomes the official result — no matter how absurd. There is no correction mechanism, no review room, no hearing that can erase the numbers already printed on paper.

The problem also lies in the judges' seating. Three judges sit at three different angles, and the angle decides a great deal about how they see a punch. A right hook can look like a "miss" to one judge and a "clean hit" to another. In football, I have dozens of camera angles to cross-check. On the ring, each judge has only one angle — their own.

The same has happened in MMA. In the UFC, more than a few fights have ended with controversial cards, and fans always feel this sport is scored more by sentiment than by technique. Some organizations have tried publishing round-by-round scores for transparency, but even with transparency, no one can change the result.

When emotion overrides the professional eye

After that night, I read hundreds of comments. Most were angry, and most were right. What made me think hardest was a short one: "If the judges scored it right, there would be nothing left to argue about." The whole online community threw itself into the debate, but most already had their conclusion before rewatching the tape. They were not seeking the truth; they were seeking agreement.

I understand that feeling more than anyone. In 2026, in the Euro semi-final between England and Denmark, I wrote that Raheem Sterling's fall was not enough evidence for a penalty. Then hundreds of objections poured in, and I panicked and revised my view. That semi-final night, I betrayed my own belief to embrace the heart. When UEFA confirmed the original decision was correct, my own community mocked me as "a VAR eye that follows the trend." That lesson taught me that a neutral referee must accept being hated, and must not bend to the majority.

But to be fair, referees are human too. Adelaide Byrd scored that fight under the pressure of a million-dollar event, before millions of viewers, between two fighters the media had elevated into icons. That pressure can bend any eye, no matter how well trained. The blind spot of an entire system lies in our trusting human objectivity, while humans are precisely the ones most vulnerable to context.

I saw what no one saw, and I have to live with it. Five thousand members, one old screen, and a belief split into five thousand pieces. Every time I make a judgment against the majority, I ask myself whether I am defending the truth or defending my own ego.

The ring needs a standard, not just an eye

No one can fully eliminate error in scoring. What can be done is to build a mechanism so that a wrong call is no longer the end of a career. Some federations have tried publishing round-by-round scores instead of only the total, so fans understand how judges scored. Others have tested larger judging panels, or added reserve judges with the right to review footage.

Technology cannot replace the human eye. But the VAR profession itself taught me a principle: when evidence is insufficient, the responsible person must be able to say "I cannot conclude." That is the highest honesty of the one who holds the scales, not weakness.

The referee blows the whistle, but the fans are the ones who deliver the final score. When five thousand people look back at one card, what they want is a reason they can believe, not a beautiful set of numbers. On today's ring, technology may not be what is missing; what is missing is a standard clear enough for both referees and fans to look in the same direction.