In September of last year, the leaders of the three main sanctioning bodies, Gilberto Mendoza of the WBA, Mauricio Sulaiman of the WBC, and Daryl Peoples of the IBF, met in Playa del Carmen in the Yucatan to discuss several important matters.

One of the issues was the possibility of creating a tournament of champions, where unification bouts between champions from different sanctioning bodies fight one another, in an attempt to establish, as was done in the past, which is the best of the best

Also discussed was the implementation of a half-point system. Instead of judges needing to score rounds 10-9 or 10-8, rounds could also be scored 9.5 or 8.5.

“One important step will be half-points,” said Mendoza. “Half-points will help bring clarity to judging, in the hope that more people will be more satisfied with the results, because they will be closer to the reality of combat in the ring.”

In Saturday’s WBA World female bantamweight title fight at Polideportivo José María Vargas in La Guaira, Venezuela, between champion Mayerlin Rivas and Sayda Mosquera, the three judges sitting ringside will be using the half-point system.

This might be a new wrinkle to an old problem, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The half-point system, while not the end all and be all, gives judges more flexibility to accurately score rounds as they see them.

This article was penned by the author who is not related to the WBA and the statements, expressions or opinions referenced herein are that of the author alone and not the WBA.