Jeff Horn has received confirmation, if it were needed, that his welterweight world title win over Manny Pacquiao was legitimate after the World Boxing Organisation conducted a review into the scoring of the fight in Brisbane.

The re-count, called for by a Filipino government department in the wake of widespread uproar over the unanimous points decision at Suncorp Stadium, found the Australian to have won the fight seven rounds to five.

Horn, who on Tuesday morning flew out to the US for the annual ESPY awards gala in Los Angeles, said the confirmation of the biggest win of his career came at a good time.

“It gives me evidence behind me that I can just use now. Instead of saying I think I won the fight, now a heap of other people – professionally – think I won the fight,” Horn said.

On the night, Horn was awarded the fight 117-111, 115-113, 115-113 by three judges – Waleksa Roldan, Chris Flores and Ramon Cerdan repsectively. Roldan in particular came in for fierce criticism of her scoring.

The contentious decision led to the Philippines’ Games and Amusements Board calling for a review. The 11-time world champion later backed that call because he didn’t want to see the boxing industry “dying because of unfair decision and officiating”.

The WBO said it would not have had the power to strip Horn of his title had the re-score been in Pacquiao’s favour – that would only be the case if fraud or a violation of law had occurred – but conducted the review because of the controversy the fight caused and for reasons of “transparency”.

Five anonymous judges were brought in to re-score the fight. They watched a re-run of the 12 rounds without sound before an analysis of their scores were used to determine the result.

“The independent results were tabulated to ascertain clearly the rounds each fighter won using an average scale based on 60, 80 and 100%,” a WBO statement read. “To determine the winner of each round, three out of the five officials have to be in agreement.



“Upon the analysis, the findings stated that Pacquiao won the third, the eighth and ninth by 100%; the fifth round was won by 80%; and the 11th round by 60%. Horn won the first, sixth and 12th rounds by 100%; the second, fourth, and seventh by 80%; and then, the 10th round by 60%.

“From the results, it can be established that Pacquiao won five rounds while Horn won seven rounds.

“The next step of the analysis was to combine the independent judges with the bout judges to find the percentage agreement by round.

“Upon doing this analysis, the findings of the judges stated that Pacquiao won the third and ninth by 100%; the eighth round was won by 87.5%; no rounds were won by 75%; the fifth round by 62.5%; and the 10th and 11th were even rounds.

“On the other hand, the judges findings stated that Horn won the first, sixth, and 12th rounds by 100%; by 87.5%, he won the fourth and the seventh; the second was won by 75%; none were won by 62.5%; and the even rounds were the 10th and the 11th.

“Based on this analysis, Jeff Horn was the winner of the bout.”

It is not the first time one of Pacquiao’s fights has been subjected to the same scrutiny. In 2012, the same method of analysis was used after Timothy Bradley’s highly controversial split decision win over the Filipino. Then, the five independent judges all found Pacquiao to have won the fight, but the WBO was unable to overturn the result.