Boxing Betting Tips: Best Ways to Use CompuBox When Betting

By Kelsey McCarson | July 27th, 2018

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CompuBox has been the industry leader for collecting and disseminating punch statistics in the sport of boxing since 1985 and thus can be used by boxing betting enthusiasts when planning their strategy. The company has worked most major boxing shows since then through their exclusive partnerships with television networks such as HBO, Showtime and ESPN.

Their computerized system features two operators, usually sitting ringside, who press buttons for connected and landed punches. The results are tallied in real-time by CompuBox’s custom-built software program so the punch stats can be shared with television networks during fight broadcasts and distributed to the media after the event.

CompuBox has also used the same method to create punch stats for historical fights except that the operators tally their results from watching video. Since 2014, CompuBox gathers real-time punch statistics for around 50 percent of the live fights they cover from their home offices in New York through live video feeds in order to save money on travel expenses.

CompuBox Stats 101

CompuBox classifies all punches (thrown and landed) as either jabs or power punches. A jab is when a fighter uses the lead arm to throw a punch straight toward the opponent with full extension. Any other punch, including hooks, crosses, uppercuts and overhands, are counted by CompuBox as power punches.

CompuBox statistics include the total counts and percentages of jabs and power punches as well as the combination of both, indicating the overall total number of punches thrown and landed by each fighter in the bout.

Over the last few years, CompuBox has also added distinctions for jabs and power punches landed to the head versus those landed to the body. CompuBox founder and president Bob Canobbio said the company is always looking for better ways to serve the sport with relevant statistical information but that consistency and accuracy are of paramount importance to the company and its operators.

CompuBox Does Not Score Fights

Professional boxing is scored by three official ringside judges assigned by the local boxing commission using the 10-point must scoring system. Unless there’s a point deduction for repeated low blows or some other rules infraction, each judge must assign the winner of each round 10 points. The loser of the round receives 9 or less points, and each round is scored independent of other rounds.

A typical boxing round is scored 10-9 unless the round is exceptionally one-side or there are knockdowns, in which case judges usually take one point away for each knockdown suffered. Otherwise, the subjective criteria used by professional boxing judges to score fights include clean punching, ring generalship, effective aggression and defense.

While CompuBox statistics can help tell the story of what happened during a fight, the company is not involved in judging boxing matches in any official capacity. Instead, CompuBox offers a specific statistical viewpoint of the action that would otherwise go unrealized. Moreover, the statistics collected over the 30-plus years CompuBox has been in business have helped fighters and trainers understand the importance of throwing and landing punches in high volumes.

CompuBox Numbers and Gambling

CompuBox is just one tool among many, including BoxStat and BoxRec, bettors can use to research and analyze fighters before placing wagers on specific fights. CompuBox does not currently offer data on its website, but does release relevant statistics about upcoming fights through social media channels as well as boxing media sites like BoxingScene.com.

CompuBox also works with their television partners to create pre-fight promotional content, which can usually be found on the television network’s website and social media channels as the fight approaches.

For the sport’s largest promotions, bookmakers will sometimes offer prop-based wagers on punch statistics tracked by CompuBox such as total number of punches thrown or landed by either or both fighters or total number of head or body punches. Some bookmakers will even offer odds on which fighter will be the first to land a punch.

As with all prop-based wagers, always read the bookmaker’s instructions and payout policies carefully before placing any bets on CompuBox statistics.

Criticism of CompuBox

While CompuBox is generally accepted within the boxing community as a source of useful information about fights and fighters, critics of the company usually point to the potential pitfalls inherent in CompuBox’s internal processes for collecting punch stats.

Boxing promoter Gary Shaw told the LA Times in 2003 after Shane Mosley’s controversial win over Oscar De La Hoya in a rematch that he didn’t think it was possible for one person to accurately count all a boxer’s punches for 12 rounds in real-time. Additionally, some in the sport argue the two CompuBox operators working live fights are too few in number and when they are in the arena they  are not optimally placed around the ring where they might have better views of the action.

Finally, there have been concerns in recent years over CompuBox moving from their original process of utilizing only ringside operators to the newer method of counting punches remotely through video. This policy chance wasn’t disclosed until three years after it began and leads some to wonder what other kinds of changes have happened without being communicated by the company.