TWICBS

Judging in MMA Needs a Change

It is nothing new in the early stages of this sport to question some of the judging during MMA events, whether it’s the UFC, Strikeforce, and even some regional promotions. It’s come to the point where a major change is needed. After last weeks Fight Night 20, the forums and blogs were up in arms about the Tom Lawlor vs Aaron Simpson fight, many fight fans and reporters feeling that a robbery had just occurred and the police should have been called. The judges in the fight scored the contest in the favor of Aaron Simpson, 29-28, 29-28, 28-29, but many fans disagreed, voicing their disapproval in the arena when the scores were announced. A respected judge in Doug Crosby posted on the Underground that he would have scored the fight in favor of Lawlor(29-28), with the rounds being broken down in the manor of 10-8, 10-10, and 9-10.

The 10-point “must” system in MMA can work, but right now it’s flawed. Many judges seem lost when it comes down to the ground game. A takedown seems to automatically win you a round and while I feel it is a technique that should be seen as a “point”, it’s not the end all be all of the fight. Both, 10-8 rounds and 10-10 rounds seem to be an extreme rarity in this sport and wasn’t even looked at in the Lawlor/Simpson fight. When you deal with a point system, draws are going to happen. Some fans might not enjoy them, but it’s a part of the sport and shouldn’t be looked down on, it’s going to happen, or at least it should happen. Most athletic commissions use judges that come from mainly judging the sport of boxing, but that might not translate well to MMA when you factor in kicks, takedowns and the ground game into the mix.

Athletic Commissions will have to look into educating more judges in all aspects of the fight game, working out when means more in a fight and how to score different techniques. Unfortunately for most fans, they are lost on how judges see these techniques when it comes to scoring a fight. Does a hard leg kick that buckles your opponent mean more or less to a judge than a hook or any other power punch? Does laying on your opponent in his guard landing very few shots mean more than a guy on the bottom  attempting legit submission attempts over and over? The other problem could be judges seeing things differently, not every judge might score the fight or score the techniques the same, which is just in human nature, people will see things differently than others, but when you’re judging a fight in this sport, you honestly can’t have that, you have to be on the same page, and at the current time, we do not have that, or at least looking from the outside, it does not seem that way.

Whether they switch to judging rules like they use in Art of War FC, by judging the fight as a whole overall, or they continue to use the 10-point must system, a change needs to be made and they should be done as soon as possible.

Popularity: 11% [?]