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In a decision that left many scratching their heads yet again, Antonio Orozco took home a wide decision win over veteran Humberto Soto in what was pretty much a dead even 10-round fight tonight on HBO, with the judges seeing the fight 97-92, 97-92, and 98-91 in favor of the unbeaten Mexican-American prospect.
BLH had the fight 95-94 for Soto, with a ninth round point deduction against Orozco the difference on our card, which was 5-5 in rounds. HBO's Harold Lederman had it 95-94 in favor of Orozco.
Soto (65-9-2, 35 KO) still looked like he had plenty left to offer in the ring, even after 13 months off and a handful of canceled dates earlier this year. At 35, he's fighting a couple of weight divisions higher than his best weights of 126 and 130, but he's got a lot of craftiness, and was able to give Orozco (23-0, 15 KO) plenty of trouble in this fight.
Orozco, 27, did some good work himself, though, and we're certainly not saying that he was the beneficiary of a robbery decision. He banged away at Soto's body and probably did more damage in the fight, hurting Soto more clearly than Soto did or could hurt him, but he was also pretty clearly outboxed just as often. As far as punch stats go, for whatever they're worth, the fight was just about dead even. Instead, the judges gave 8 of 10 rounds to Orozco twice, and 9 of 10 on the third card. There were some debatable rounds here, and I suppose if you gave basically all of them to Orozco, those cards could make sense, but it seems as though Soto was given no credit by the judges.
What do you think? Were the judges off in this fight? How did you score it?