Even as promoters and television executives continue to negotiate over the particulars of the Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield rematch (the date will be either November 6th or 13th, the site either Las Vegas or New York), the fallout from their first encounter continues unabated.

Holyfield himself testified this week before a New York state Senate subcommittee currently investigating boxing, largely as a result of the controversial draw at Madison Square Garden last month (Lewis also provided evidence, albeit via videotape). Meanwhile, two of the world's sanctioning bodies have each developed experimental new systems, both of which will be unveiled for the first time on a Don King-promoted card in Washington DC this Saturday night.

When Sharmba Mitchell defends his World Boxing Association light welterweight championship against Reggie Green, the tallies of the three ringside judges will be announced after every round.

An hour or so later, when World Boxing Council champion Hasine Cherifi of France meets the former holder, Keith Holmes, the scorecard totals will be announced after the fourth and eighth rounds, as well as at the conclusion of the bout.

The WBC system of periodically updating the scoring will also be in effect in Las Vegas on May 8th, when Wayne McCullough challenges Mexico's Erik Morales for the organisation's light-featherweight title. Well-intentioned though they might be, both systems represent simplistic band-aid approaches to a larger issue, and promise to create as many problems as they resolve.

The presumption has been widespread that something rotten must have been afoot on the night of March 15th at Madison Square Garden, and, to outsiders, the proliferation of investigations and the hastily-contrived "reforms" developed by the two sanctioning bodies seem to serve as confirmation that the Lewis-Holyfield decision was rooted in corruption.

My inclination at the time was to ascribe the decision to stupidity rather than larceny. Nothing, including the revelations about Judge Eugenia Williams' precarious finances, has persuaded me otherwise. As my friend George Foreman described it when the subject was broached during his recent visit to Ireland, "in boxing there's always been more nuts than crooks".

With the possible exception of golf, where leader-boards are not always visible (and are sometimes not up-to-date), boxing has traditionally been unique among sports, in that the competitors themselves don't know the score while the event is in progress.

You can argue with that reality all you want, but the fact remains: That isn't why the WBA and WBC are attempting to reform their scoring procedures. Moreover, it is by no means clear that the changes will serve as any sort of safeguard against impropriety or corruption. "The intent of `open scoring' is to let the public and the boxers know how the judges are scoring each round as the fight progresses," explained York Van Nixon, a WBA vice president. "It will allow parties to know how the fight is going and remove doubt at the same time."

Now, with or without open scoring, we've seen boxers do silly things in the late rounds of fights just because they thought the judges were leaning one way or the other. The two systems on display this Saturday night only enhance the possibility of ill-conceived tactics.

Although it will be open scoring's debut in world title fights, Saturday night won't be the first time such a system has been used in the United States. For several years earlier in this decade, the state of Massachusetts attempted to implement a scoring system whereby blue and red lights were placed in the corresponding corners, and illuminated at the conclusion of each round.

One obvious imperfection was that a boxer could win, say, the first three rounds of a four-round fight but have no clue whether he was ahead by one, two, or three points. Another was that rather than enhancing the accountability of judges, it placed extraordinary pressures on them. A vocal hometown crowd didn't even have to wait until the end of a fight to commence heaping verbal abuse (and, occasionally, thrown objects) on an offending judge.

In the aftermath of another controversial big fight, the 1987 middleweight championship bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvellous Marvin Hagler, the late Chuck Minker (himself a former judge, and then the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission) pointed out to me with some amusement, "You'll notice everybody knew where they were. Each of the three judges tried to cover his ass by giving the last round to the guy he had behind."

Beyond not wanting to have his scorecard stick out like a sore thumb, a judge's scorecard can also reflect another human instinct - that of basic self-preservation. He wants to get out of the building alive, and making the audience privy to his round-by-round scoring totals doesn't exactly guarantee that.

It should also be noted that a certain predisposition on the part of ringside judges has long been anticipated by the sanctioning bodies, which for years have recommended that officials from neutral countries be utilised for world title fights. Lewis-Holyfield was something of an anomaly in that the WBC, WBA, and International Boxing Federation were each allowed to appoint one judge. The WBC had originally nominated Daniel Van De Wiele of Belgium, and replaced him with England's Larry O'Connell only because the IBF insisted on having an American - Ms. Williams - on the panel.

O'Connell, who was supposed to serve as a counterweight, scored the fight level after 12 rounds, and in this regard he is probably more to blame than Williams for the botched outcome. While her numbers might have been skewed, by favouring Holyfield she merely did what she had been expected to do. It was the judge from Lewis' home country (or one of them, anyway) who failed to live up to his end of the bargain.

Apart from the probability that it would have caused Williams to feel a bit silly for having given the fifth round (thoroughly dominated by Lewis in the view of most ringside observers) to the American, neither the WBA's, nor the WBC's `Open Scoring' system would have affected the outcome of the March fight in any case. Even had she gotten that one right, Williams' total would still have allowed Holyfield to escape with a majority draw.

Hagler, who ruled the middleweight division for most of the 1980s, was notoriously mistrustful of boxing officials after losing a couple of out-of-town decisions early in his career, and vowed not to let it happen again.

"From now on," Hagler would say as he displayed his left and right fists, "I'm bringing my two judges with me."