With the recent controversial decision at 104 and people casting their minds back to the Bisping/Hamill fight, A lot of this site has mentioned that the UFC may be becoming the new Boxing, not in popularity but because of the ability to buy a decision

What people fail to remember is the blatant wrong decisions Boxing has had in the past. Rua/Shogun was close and the win could have went either way. Now cast your mind back to June of 2004. Oscar De La Hoya fought Felix Sturm for the WBO Middleweight title, but more than that, this fight was a Joint Headliner with Bernard Hopkins Defending his Middleweight titles (IBF, WBA and WBC) against Robert Allen. The idea was that if De La Hoya held the WBO belt, a super fight would be made for all 4 MW titles between Oscar and Bernard Hopkins. Felix Sturm did not read the script. Instead he went out there and outclassed Oscar for the whole fight. But Felix would not sell in America, and a fight against Bernard was not even mentioned. For this reason all 3 judges called the fight 115-113 (The narrowest of margins) to Oscar. And poor Felix returned to Germany with his first loss and has not returned to the US since then. But oddly enough Germany is known worldwide as the worst place for a travelling boxer to fight. It is generally believed that to win in Germany, you need a KO as no German based fighter will ever lose a decision in Germany. If you have never seen it, i advise you to watch a truly mind-boggling fight between WBA and IBF champion (and undefeated) Sven Ottke (if you've never heard of him it's because he's only fought outside Germany once, and that was in Austria) And Robin Reid. This was the pinnacle of bias decisions as Ottke was often told the judges score during rounds while Reid was left to believe he had dominated the round. In round 6 a perfectly legitimate knock-down was ruled as a slip by German Referee Roger Tillerman And in the same round Reid was deducted a point for a headbutt that Ottke clearly threw (this proved to be a huge round because if the round had been called correctly, it would have been a 10-8 round to Reid, And 2 judges would have had to call the fight in Reids favour) At one point Robin Reid was actually warned about hitting the champion and home favourite in the face. At the end of the "fight" 2 judges had called it 115-113 to Ottke and 1 had it 117-112 in favour of Ottke. Robin Reid later joked that "You don't expect any favours fighting in Germany but at least Dick Turpin wore a mask when he robbed people" While Sven Ottke remained unbeaten through-out his career (with other dubious decisions to help) Robin Reid never recovered from this loss. Sturm went on to win the WBA Middleweight title, but is still to make a name for himself in America. My point is that while a rematch is likely between Mauricio Rua and Lyoto Machida, the bad decisions go largely un-noticed and forgotten in Boxing and as long as the UFC and indeed the whole of MMA strives towards righting wrong decisions, then it will always hold a higher moral ground than that of Boxing