An interesting observation on an old fight: Dieselnoi vs Nongkhai

[Daemon]

Originally posted in a FB group, but Sylvie thought this might get some feedback here - so first post on the forum:

 

So randomly watching an old fight between Dieselnoi and Nongkhai and couldn't help but notice what appeared to be a ref bias in favor of Dieselnoi in a particular way.

The stand out observation for me was how the ref kept placing Dieselnoi away from the corners/ ropes after a clinch break up. To make sure I wasn't seeing things that weren't there, I decided to take some initial metrics. I counted the total number of times the ref broke up a clinch, not including the end of the round break up. And then I counted the number of times of that total that the ref moved a given fighter away from the rope or corner. If the ref put them in a relatively even position after break up, eg both being an equal distance from the ropes, I didn't count that as an advantage for either fighter. Here's what I counted:

 

Total # of break ups: 18

Number of times favored Dieselnoi: 13

Number of times favored Nongkhai: 2

 

In several of the times favoring Dielselnoi, he was actually the one who was against the ropes / corner. In those cases, the ref literally guided Dieselnoi around Nongkhai to place Dieselnoi closer to the center of the ring. In the 2 cases I counted in favor of Nongkhai, he was already the one closer to the center of the ring.

 

There were other observations, but those are much less obvious and harder to judge. Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rOApza4V4

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Being in the middle of the ring in Thai scoring is not in and of itself an advantage in Thai scoring. Any time Dieselnoi has talked to me about strategy, he's focused on getting the opponent into the ropes before doing much of anything at all. Referees certainly shape fights in all kinds of ways; but being at the center of the ring is not what I'd call an advantage, certainly not so much as when and how the referee breaks the clinch being a much bigger deal in shaping the fight.