The Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury rematch for the unified heavyweight world championship had a rather unprecedented judge.
That's because in addition to the three standard, traditional judges scoring the mega fight, there was a fourth judge scoring the action Saturday night as well — an Artificial Intelligence judge.
While the judges in Riyadh scored the bout in favor of the defending champ Usyk, 116-112 across the board, the AI judge saw the Ukrainian winning by a larger margin.
The AI judge scored it 118-112 for Usyk, certainly crediting the undefeated fighter for his incessant motor and higher workrate which he used to bank round after round. In total, the AI judge only gave Fury the nod for the first, second, fifth and 12th rounds.
With judges' scoring in boxing being criticized often and given the proliferation of AI technology, it will be interesting to see if the AI judge continues to be used in big prize fights in the future.
Prior to the fight, His Excellency Turki Alalshikh took to his X social media account and called the AI judging "an experimental AI scoring system," adding "let’s see how this experiment unfolds."
that he's got results, let's see how it's used from here.