Currently, three judges oversee a bout on the ten-point must system, although the recent tournament brought about several controversial results that saw officials sent home for their troubles.
Contests in particular involved Ireland’s Michael Conlan, Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin, Great Britain’s Joe Joyce and Frenchman Tony Yoka, but it was the current European and World bantamweight champion who seemed the most hard done by.
Conlan staged a one-man protest in the wake of losing to Nikitin in a quarter-final fight that looked for all the world like a win for the Belfast man – and is one of the main bouts leading to the possible changes by Wu.
“You can go through the right channel to say, ‘OK, may I have the chance to really review this bout?’ We do have the ability to review. This bout particularly, with his behavior that drew a lot of attention, we wanted to review whether it’s correct or not,” Wu told the Associated Press.
“Judges have no intentions. Why do (you think) they hate your country? The judges, why do they want it in favour of this (country) over the other one? There’s no reason.
“But since that happened, we want to totally review our system, how to improve in our mind. Maybe five judges will score all fights, and all scores will be open. No more computer selection.
“I proposed these changes to our referee-judge management. We look at five and select three by computer, only showing the three. Maybe in the future we should change it to all five judges all showing, nothing to hide. It will be transparent. We will continue to work to make it in a more perfect condition.”
In the super-heavyweight final, Joyce was defeated by Yoka via split decision on two cards but a third judge from Turkey somehow scored all three for the eventual gold medallist despite the loser throwing triple the amount of punches and landing double.
The old system of scoring single punches was also roundly criticised due to shocking defeats for Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr. so bringing in two extra officials seems a logical next step but is no guarantee of an indisputable Olympics in four years’ time.
