I Know, I Know. Another Post on Judging.

Between UFC 104, 105, 106, fighter comments, and Dana White's comments it is well accepted that the judging in MMA is in need of some work.  It appears that everyone closely and loosely associated with the sport is aware of a problem except the state athletic commissions.  While Zak just uploaded a post detailing the recent events regarding scoring in the sport, I still wanted to reiterate a point I have made before concerning a solution to the problem.  Open the scoring up, way up.  Clearly to fix the problem the athletic commission will need to further educate their judges from the beginning and create a clearer set of defined rules for how to score a fight, but the manner in which fights are scored needs to be changed as well.

There is obviously similarities between boxing and MMA.  They are both combat sports, involve some form of striking, and the matches are executed using a round by round system.  It is not surprising that the format with which boxing is judged was used as the foundation for MMA (at least in the United States).  Mixed Martial Arts uses much larger criteria in which to score a fight because it incorporates grappling, striking, control, damage, submissions, etc... so the method for judging a fight obviously needs to be different, but another major difference between the sports is the length of the fights.  A non-title fight in the UFC is not a 12 round Championship Boxing match where the rate of error reduces over the course of the fight.  Within a three round affair one round that is judged incorrectly can easily cost a fighter a victory.  Open the scoring up.

When looking at the score cards from the Griffin/Ortiz fight the fact that shocked me was not the round by round winners, but that no judges scored the third round 10-8.  It is not their fault, the culture of judging calls for 10-9 with the exception of complete and utter destruction.  This is a major cause of problems as fights are not appropriately judged because of the assumption that the only way to win a round is by a single point.  Compare this to other sports and the logic is hysterically outrageous.  Looking at football assume team "A" barely outscores team "B" 7-6 in the first three quarters, but in the fourth quarter team "B" outscored team "A" 13-0.  The final score would be 31-21 in favor of team "B," but based on MMA judging we would award the game to the team "A" because they "won" the majority of the quarters.  There without question needs to be more of discrepancy between rounds. 

According to FightMetric the effectiveness score in the third round was 175-13 Griffin and the score in round two was 67-51 Ortiz.  These rounds were both scored 10-9.  How is it possible that those two rounds have the same numerical value toward the outcome of the fight, it is insane and completely illogical. 

I assume that the majority of people agree with me so far, but I might lose a few people here.  That third round should have been 10-7 if not 10-6.  Judging in MMA is so committed to the boxing format that we cannot see how illogical the scoring method is.  Why when a fighter is completely outclassed and offers no offense or defense in a round that we award him so many points.  To help reduce the amount of judging controversies we can increase the point differential for each round.  I propose a range of 10-6 to 10-10.  Keeping with the format of the current system, but changing the culture of how we score will help with the problem.  A breakdown of how the proposed scoring would operate follows:

SBN coverage of UFC 106: Ortiz vs. Griffin 2

Proposed Scoring System

10-10: A draw, same as today.  A judge determines that neither fighter outperformed the other.

10-9: One fighter barely outpointed his opponent.  This score should be an example where one rounds can be scored 10-9 for different fighters by different judges.

10-8: This should be the standard.  One fighter was clearly the victor of the round, but not in devastating fashion.

10-7: Comparable to what is currently accepted as a 10-8 round, except used with more frequency.  It involves pure domination from a fighter, but

10-6: One fighter dismantled the opponent while the opponent offered nothing.  Similar to the proposed 10-7 except the dominating fighter almost ended the fight on at least on occasion.  Would not be a common score, but used more frequently than a current 10-7.

Side Note:  Opening up the scoring would make educating judges even more important.  Providing judges with more discretion will work only if they truly understand the sport and what to judge the fights on.  If uneducated and unprepared judges are opening up their scores then the problems can magnified.  As I said at the very beginning the most important parts are educating the judges and creating a clearer set of defined rules for how to score a fight.  However, if steps can made in the right direction regarding those two aspects then the open scoring can have huge gains for judging in MMA.