State Of Judging After Phan Vs. Garcia Could Bring New Opportunity To A State Willing To Step Up

Added on Dec 08, 2010 by John Petit in

UFC & MMA

When you watch as many MMA fights as I do you are bound to run into a bad decision or two. There is no reason to keep babbling about how Phan beat Garcia. Everyone in the stadium, everyone at home, and Dana White thought he won. Everyone except two people who had better seats then all of us.

Keith Kizer has now scoffed at the words of Joe Rogan, and insisted nothing will happen to Tony Weeks and Adelaide Bird. The frustrating part for me is that they are boxing judges. Think about the fight we saw on Saturday night. We saw two guys punch each other for 15 minutes, and its what these guys know best. Tony Weeks has been judging boxing for decades, and still can’t tell how horribly Leonard Garcia throws overhand rights? We didn’t see a Muay Thai fight, and we sure didn’t see two Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighters roll for fifteen minutes. Of all people, who should have gotten a stand up fight right, it should have been those two.

Before we go on, I am one of those people who doesn’t call for a huge amount of change unless I have a good idea to take its place. I don’t have a solution to the problems in judging in this day, and therefore I won’t be calling for the ban of the 10 point must system.

Doc Hammilton came up with the system of using half points. The idea is that there can be more of a variable between winners of rounds. If I got really handled by a fighter, I would lose the round by a full point, but if I came back a little I would lose the round by a half point. We run into the same problem we have now though. We still have an environment where the judges do not understand the nuances of mixed martial arts. So basically you are handing Weeks and Bird a new tool belt of tools to get a decision wrong.

The idea of monitors for the judges is intriguing to me. I have been cage side enough to be blinded by posts, or miss entire finishes because of perspective. I think this is an opportunity for an athletic commission to take a step forward, since Nevada doesn’t seem to be interested, and create an environment where you can use monitors, or even use separate judges for Boxing and MMA. I am wiling to bet organizations like the UFC, Strikeforce, and Bellator would reward them with a fair amount of events. Attention State Commissions: The UFC brings in millions of dollars when they come to town! Anyone want some money? There are cheap solutions to these problems, and the reward could be grand.

It all comes down to education if you ask me. The judges need to know what they are looking at when they are making career deciding/defining decisions that will largely effect peoples lives and future in professional sports. The good news in all of this is that we now hear the reaction of fans. I remember a time when a bad decision happened, all you saw was some angry threads on mma.tv, and at the most someone would get angry enough to write a report or blog about it. I am seeing twitter campaigns, I am seeing facebook petitions, and hundreds of opinion pieces from bloggers and journalists. The fact that this is even at the front of the line in conversation is a big step if you ask me. It takes a small step forward in changing things for the better, and thats better than going backwards and ignoring it.