Pacquiao vs. Marquez: Fighters to have extra meeting explaining scoring criteria prior to fight

Saturday night’s HBO boxing pay-per-view between Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao is the rare time boxers have met for a fourth time after a first three fights that saw a draw followed by two wins for one of the fighters (Pacquiao). Despite this seemingly lopsided total in the first trifecta of trips to the ring, the rivalry remains interesting because Marquez has legitimate claims that he is the man who deserved the decision in all of the previous bouts.

Between the controversy surrounding those fights and Pacquiao seemingly being robbed in front of God and everyone by the judges against Timothy Bradley in his last fight, there is plenty of reason to wonder about the judging headed into tomorrow evening.

The Las Vegas Review Journal is reporting that the judges will meet with the fighters after tonight’s weigh-in. Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Keith Kizer will speak to the fighters and explain how exactly the fight will be scored, basically just making the long-standing rules extra clear to the fighters. Of course, the problem with this is that most of the issues with scoring aren’t that fans don’t understand how it works (despite Kizer never admitting even once that the scoring may have been wrong and deserved extra attention in basically any fight ever).

The meeting between Kizer and the fighters will be recorded and will air on the HBO pay-per-view broadcast.