Issue 059
February 2010
MMA judging is in the spotlight. Good, because it needs clarification. Late last year, two MMA contests highlighted the pitfalls of the system in employ.
The fights between Donald Cerrone and Ben Henderson (WEC 43) and Lyoto Machida and Shogun Rua (light heavyweight title, UFC 104) caused a worldwide landslide of debate and disagreement. There was debate for a week. Then it all died away.
In short, do the scoring of fights and the unified rules need a makeover? And, as the sport grows into the mainstream, should the judges, referees and officials train with professionals and become more ‘rounded’ themselves, just as the fighters have become?
When it goes as far as UFC president Dana White openly insisting that “none of us want to see this in MMA” – in reference to the Machida-Rua contest – and judges feeling they need to explain publicly how and why they scored a contest, as Cecil Peoples did, only opening a can of worms, then surely the system needs examination.
While we will never get away from the fact that fight sports are judged subjectively, it appears there is a need to tighten the system, clarify the blurriness at the edges of the criteria on which a fight is marked, and perhaps, dare I say it, bring in some changes. I do not have the space in this column to replicate MMA’s judging criteria in full, but, in abbreviated form, contests are judged on:
Clean Strikes – the number and efficiency of strikes, with each heavy strike counting more than each lesser one (I think this is not always the case in the contests I’ve seen).
Effective Grappling – clean takedowns, active guard, submission from guard, guard to mount. Yet the guard position alone is judged as neutral. A clean reversal should be equal to a clean takedown.
Octagon Control – the fighter who is dictating the pace, place and position of the fight. Creation of opportunities on the ground, or takedown defense, or takedowns.
Effective Aggressiveness – the fighter moving forward and scoring; moving forward but being struck is not effective aggressiveness. Shooting takedowns but being countered is also not effective aggression.
In the judges’ criteria, striking and grappling are of top priority, then Octagon control, then effective aggressiveness. I know there are many nuances within my breakdown, broadly-speaking, the criteria are as above.
My view is this: Two tweaks would give clarity to the three judges seated around the Octagon. Firstly, I believe there is a need for the referee to be a ‘fourth official’. He is in place and has a better view of the action than almost anyone. Secondly, the judges should be encouraged to use the breadth of the round-by-round ten point-must system. Judges could be encouraged to score a dominant round more readily, to 10-8, or even, if it is a landslide round, 10-7. It is within their power to do so, yet it rarely appears to be used. But just scoring 10-8 rounds would make a difference. Come to that, drawn 10-10 rounds are rare, too.
These suggestions need to be put to the judges’ panel, the state athletic commissions and the bodies overseeing officials in the UK, Canada and Germany. How many of us when we criticize judges are aware of the small print in the judging criteria? Many of us often go on the ‘feel’ of a fight. Some of us scribble notes of every move, some are watching live, some on television, while some are swayed by commentary. From experience I have learned that a fight watched on television differs vastly from a fight watched live.
Moreover – and this is an important point – it is irrelevant if you watch a fight a second time and score it differently. Judges see a fight once, live, and the decision is set in stone. There’s no merit in simply quoting CompuStrike (Rua outlanded Machida 89-50 in total strikes, including 73 leg kicks), or FightMetric, which measures a fight based on all aspects of MMA and scored it 49-47 for Rua – not the 48-47 for Machida that the judges saw (but in three different ways).
Reformists have often pointed to the system used in Japan by Dream, or the erstwhile Pride FC, as a possible alternative way of deriving a more fitting outcome to close contests. In Dream the three judges score a contest in its entirety rather than by rounds. Attempts to finish a fight are worth much in the judges’ eyes.
The judging system in Dream does at least allow for an overview of the entire contest. There are those arguing that better decisions come from scoring a fight as a whole episode rather than scoring it round by round. If the Rua-Machida fight were seen as a whole, under these conditions, it may well have gone to the challenger.
But I would argue there would not have been a need if the judges use the fullness of the ten point-must system effectively. No system will ever be immune from dubious decisions, because close fights will always be seen differently. We are in a sport of opinions, and we will never get away from that.
Gareth A Davies is the boxing and MMA correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.
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