Understand winning criteria

The Labour Day falling on Friday gave us a good long weekend which was quite eventful for many. Even those that did not plan much for the long weekend looked forward to what was billed as the biggest (in financial terms) boxing event ever – the bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Before I could have the chance to watch the bout, I had an event to attend on the Labour Holiday itself. There was a public speaking training workshop for some 60 or so university students. I was invited to provide motivation for mastering public speaking. At the workshop, one of the organisers requested six volunteers to compete for the best Impromptu Speaker and the prize was quite attractive—a book and a smart phone!

The organiser told the contestants that each one of them would be given a uniq ue statement to debate on and that although the debate questions would be very controversial, each contestant would be required to argue for and NOT against the statement. It was interesting to observe that at least two if not three of the six contestants argued AGAINST the statements. Some of those who missed this rule had actually spoken very well and would be good candidates to win the contest. One of the organisers pointed out that those contestants that did not follow the rule needed to be disqualified!
Fast forward to Sunday morning. I really looked forward to the boxing bout between the two great boxing professionals. I had chosen to support Mayweather, unlike several of my friends that were communicating on a chat forum during the bout. There were still a handful of others that also supported Mayweather. As the fight started, I actually thought that Mayweather was losing. After two rounds, I felt I could be wrong because I am not fully conversant with how judges award points for boxing.
This made me turn to ‘Google’ so that I could get live commentaries and scoring to guide me on who was actually winning. This led me to the live commentary by the Washington Post. There, I found that contrary to the impressions of an average viewer without great knowledge of the game, Mayweather was leading. To an average person, including me, Pacquiao looked more active and as if he was throwing more punches. But those in the know, saw the opposite. They found Mayweather being defensively superior and very efficient and accurate with his punches. In other words, Mayweather knew when, where and how to through his punches. Now I started to enjoy the fight more, knowing that the boxer that I was supporting was actually leading.
Indeed, after the 12th round, the announcer declared Mayweather as champion, stating that all the three judges for the bout were unanimous on this determination. Immediately, most of the fans of Pacquiao complained – that he was robbed of a clear win. In fact, in a TV interview minutes after the bout, Pacquiao himself said: “I thought I have won the fight.” He was clearly surprised.
Clearly, Pacquiao and his followers who thought that he had won the fight were not following the wining criteria. Pacquiao was very active in the fight and doing all sorts of great work but not really scoring the right points. He was being ‘randomly active’ and hoping that somehow that would win him the fight. What he really needed was to fully understand how one wins the bout, how judges score the points and then do nothing but those right things that make up the winning points, as did Mayweather.
All our major preoccupations in life are contests. We are all in a race all the time. To win, we need to clearly understand the winning criteria. We should then play by the rules and do the things that win the points. No matter how good we may appear in our fields of work or business but if we do not conform with the winning criteria, we will not win! Good luck as you place importance on and start using winning criteria to win and become successful!