Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Judging explained

See? Listening to lots of mma podcasts can be educational.

Rampage uses Pride opening theme music for entrance music and he won. Coincidence? Nope

so you're saying that the Pride music led to the shitty judging that awarded him the fight?

using the pride style of judging fights as a whole, rampage would've loss. But pride judging uses nebulous concepts such as "the effort made to finish the fight via KO or submission" while offering little accountability for any terrible judges' decisions.

using the 10 point must system incorrectly (aka never awarding 10-10 or rarely giving 10-8 rounds), rampage could easily won rounds 1 and 2 since they were really close and there was no definite winner.

using the 10 point must system correctly (aka 10-10 rounds, 10-8 rounds), at worst rampage would've got a draw if not won the fight. ---> http://blog.fightmetric.com/2010/11/rampage-vs-machida-fightmetric-report.html

the 10 point must system used correctly does work, but the main problem is the number of rounds. high level contenders should be fighting 5 rounds not 3.

To say that this was bad judging is a stretch. I was absolutely enraged by the Megumi Fujii/Zoila Frausto decision and whenever Leonard Garcia gets the judges' nod.

Fair enough, I guess it is a bit of a stretch to call it bad judging, I'm just getting really sick of the judging I've been seeing lately. What I saw in that fight was one fighter (Rampage) coming straight forward and only punching and not capitalizing on Clinch/Takedowns, and another (Machida) using movement, angles and strong defense to make Rampage miss alot and also score alot of points himself. Also, in the third round, hands down Machida won...the second the major offense for Rampage was the takedown, which, aside from the takedown itself Rampage did nothing with it and Machida got up almost immediately.
I have to say I was probably harder on that fight based on the decision from last weeks Marquadt/Okami fight, where although I thought the fight could have gone either way, Marquardt definitely won the second round and one judge somehow saw the fight 30-27 for Okami.
As for the Fujii/Frausto fight, I only saw like the final round or so but Frausto looked strong...although I know Fujii was highly favoured so I expect she fought quite well.

Long read ahead.

mma judges are either:

a) inbred idiots (cecil peoples, dalby shirley, glenn trowbridge, douglas crosby, adeleye byrd, and small/inexperienced athletic commissions aka places that bellator goto)

b) good judges (ie nelson hamilton, jeff blatnik) who can't see the action because i) they don't have a monitor and ii) aren't allowed to watched the big screen. So if they have a bad viewing angle, they are shit out of luck.

mma fans also quick to break out the hyperbole for any quasi questionable decisions like rampage/machida. Save the anger for real robberies.

For example, i saw this boxing after dark match last year (Ali Funeka D12 Joan Guzman) and it was one of the worst decisions that I've ever seen. Dan rafeal from espn: "There are controversial decisions. There are bad decisions. And then there is this -- a highway robbery."
--> http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/columns/story?columnist=rafael_dan&id=4698359

This decision was so bad that other promoters (who had no fighters involved) complained about it.
--> http://espn.go.com/sports/boxing/blog/_/name/rafael_dan/id/4698978/funeka-robbery-swept-rug

So you might think "who cares? it's boxing judges and/or it's corrupt"

a) The judges might've been paid off, but it's a high investment/low payoff for a relatively obscure lightweight fighter.

b) even if a judge turns in a bad card, they aren’t held accountable. In boxing, Cristian Mijares beat jose Navarro 115-113 and 117-111 on two cards. Yet somehow judge Doug Tucker scored it 120-108 Navarro aka Navarro winning every single round. Tucker gave the athletic commission a half assed explanation and got away scot free

b2) Bad judges won’t get shit-canned because it’s a government job (state athletic commission) barring a titantic screwup --> douglas Crosby getting canned for bragging about the bad edgar-penn decision (50-45 edgar) --> http://www.fightopinion.com/2010/04/12/ufc-judge-doug-crosby-abu-dhabi/

c) boxing judges = mma judges, since athletic commissions can't seem to realize despite being two very different sports, you can’t use boxing judges for mma matches. But it happens anyways.

Agreed. But honestly from a strictly mma promotion v. maa promotion view it seems like the bad judging is happening more often in the UFC then in other promotions like Bellator, Dream, and even the WEC. It almost seems like as the purses grow the amount of times that one judge scores a fight really badly grows.

I don't have the numbers tallied, so i don't know whether there are more bad decisions in the UFC vs other promotions.

But the UFC's profile and status is bigger than every other promotion *combined*, so it may lead to the perception that bad decisions occur more frequently in the UFC. And the UFC does run a lot of cards nowadays.

I think what it is is that there are more fighters in the UFC fighting the safe route and trying to keep their spot on the roster, and that leads to a lot more low action decisions, which likewise lead to a lot more bad decisions based on the lack of action by which to judge the fight.

that's a really good point that i forgot about.

FIghter sponsorship money is much lower outside of the UFC and other promotions are much more unstable (ie Affliction, IFL, etc).