This past weekend’s May 2nd and May 3rd shows revealed a lot. Particularly, it exposed a startling amount of selective bias as Devin Haney becomes the scapegoat for this past weekend’s failure, Turki Alalshikh’s role in this becomes overlooked, while other fighters that performed worse on the same card seem to avoid the brunt of criticism.

Context is perhaps the most important aspect when it comes to law, as every case must be examined to the fullest to deliver the right verdict.

However, in boxing, context often appears such a rare occurrence when it comes to analyzing fights that it contributes to the many problems that pervade through boxing.

Nothing made that more clear than this past weekend when Devin Haney (32-0, 15 KO’s) was criticized back and forth for a “trackstar” performance, as fellow American Rolando “Rolly” Romero (17-2, 13 KO’s) would describe Haney’s fight against Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-3, 18 KO’s) on May 2nd.

Romero, who would fight Ryan Garcia (24-2, 20 KO’s) after Haney’s fight for the vacant WBA “regular” welterweight (147 lbs) title, did not notice that his fight was rated as the 3rd lowest fight for fewest-thrown punches in a 12-round bout ― a statistic he himself contributed to with his 279 punches overall, 54 more than Haney threw, though Haney landed 70 of his punches as opposed to Romero’s 57.

Ryan Garcia would throw less than both Haney and Romero, throwing only 210 punches while landing 66 of them ― 4 less than what Haney landed. On paper, it would appear Garcia was the more efficient fighter on the night and by only a 0.1% when taking into account Haney’s landed percentage of 31.3%, yet these statistics also reveal an overlooked aspect of fights that determines which fighter was actually more engaged: the power punch statistics.

In this regard, Haney trumps both Romero and Garcia quite substantially, throwing 92 power punches in total while landing almost half of them in the 45 punches landed.

In comparison, Romero had Garcia both landed 18 power punches in total while respectively throwing 65 and 48 punches.

Despite throwing and landing more than twice the power punches that Garcia did, Haney’s out-box style of boxing has clearly not endeared itself to fans but the statistics and the fights themselves have only allowed skewed opinions to muddle the actual reality.

That is compounded by the fact that the Romero-Garcia fight was for the WBA “regular” world title, while the Haney-Ramirez bout, while a 12-round fight, was a non-title match. Haney further won almost every round in his fight with two judges scoring it 119-109 in his favor, while another judge scored it 118-110. Haney’s dominant run to this victory, however, would be conveniently left out or downplayed in face of the criticism he faced.

The commentators further contributed to what appears to be blatant attempts to alter plain reality, with Haney becoming heavily criticized by them during his match with Ramirez, while both Romero and Garcia avoided any type of criticism during the same lulls in matches were action was minimal ― evident by moments where commentators spoke on how Romero and Garcia physically looked rather than noting their performances.

The commentary bias was also evident in Canelo Alvarez’ (63-2-2, 39 KO’s) May 3rd fight against William Scull (23-1, 9 KO’s). Scull, who threw 293 punches and landed 55 of them, was the more criticized fighter due to his tendency to constantly move around the ring. While Scull was visibly and statistically the more active fighter as opposed to Alvarez, who landed 56 punches out of a historical low of 152 punches thrown, his employment of a backfoot, out-box style would become the focus point of the commentary rather than Alvarez’ own inactivity being included.

As an interview between Fight Hub TV and William Scull would unveil, Scull was considered the least performing fighter of the night with the interviewer remarking how ringside spectators believed Scull should have thrown more punches during the fight, despite him having thrown twice as much as Alvarez.

In this case, the power punches statistics only slide in Scull’s favor when it comes to performance when we consider Alvarez landed 48 out of a total of 89 thrown, whereas Scull landed 28 power punches out of 73 thrown. The only thing that fell out of Scull’s favor in this regard was the inefficiency of his jabs, with the Cuban fighter landing just 27 out of the 220 thrown, though when comparing this to Alvarez’ 8-landed jabs out of 63 thrown it paints a much clearer picture ― one where statistics ultimately do not appear to matter at all, unless argued in favor of a fighter a spectator likes.

This very much has caused a reoccurring problem in boxing as statistics form a part of the larger context, one that aims to analyze every single element of a fight to determine what actually happened.

And the context here is crystal clear. None of the aforementioned fights did well due to the fighters’ performances, yet the Haney-Ramirez fight did the best out of all the three fights mentioned despite breaking the record for taking 4th place for a 12-round fight with the fewest thrown punches in CompuBox’s 40-year history.

Inarguably, all of the three referenced bouts were poor, yet criticism should be evenly distributed rather than selectively selected.

But of course, in a sport where corruption appears to be order of the day, context, statistics, and every other important element unfortunately do not matter in the greater scheme, as evident by how the ringside consensus on the Alvarez-Scull fight could only seem to point at one fighter at the cause ― and ironically not the fighter who will go down in CompuBox’s 40-year history as taking 2nd place of fewest-thrown punches in a 12-round bout.