Defining The 10-7 Round
Added on Jan 04, 2011 by John Petit in
1 Comment
If you ask UFC President Dana White about the 10-7 round, he says they don’t exist, and he compares them to the unicorn. “They Don’t exist. You never seem them,” he said after UFC 125, and he is right. Sort of. The fact of the matter is this, a 10-7 score is a perfectly legitimate score and the ten point must scoring system that mixed martial arts uses allows it for a reason. Of course, this is in the news because of the first round of the Frankie Edgar Vs Gray Maynard title bout from UFC 125. All three judges scored the first 10-8 in favor of Maynard. This raises the interesting question: What does a 10-7 round look like?
Lets stay on UFC 125 for these examples, because not only is it current news, but its fresh in peoples minds. Before we get into what a 10-7 looks like, lets talk about the 10-8. In the Brandon Vera Vs Thiago Silva fight, there is no question that SIlva made Vera look almost foolish in the fight. Vera had no answer for the top and back control of Thiago, and was pounded on until his nose was on a 45 degree angle for his troubles. In the last round, even though they should have probably been stood up, Silva had back and side control for almost four minutes and thirty seconds. Thiago didn’t knock him down in the round, he didn’t come close to finishing him, and he certainly didn’t do anything really impressive to try and win the fight. However, all of the judges gave him the final round 10-8. I agree with them as Vera wasn’t even remotely competitive, and almost showed no signs of fighting back or avoiding damage.
Now lets look at round 1 of the Championship fight between Edgar and Maynard. We saw about a minute of feeling each other out, and then some short bursts of both fighters jumping in and out. Everything changed when Maynard landed a left hook that made Edgar do his Bambi on ice impression, and the pendulum swung hard and fast in Maynard’s favor. Maynard proceeded to chase Edgar around the cage beating on him like he keyed his ‘69 Camarro in front of him. He knocked him down five times (more depending on how you interpret a few of them,) he out landed Edgar 44-11, and no one in the arena would have complained if the fight was stopped. I’m also willing to argue that the only reason why it wasn’t stopped, was because of the stakes on the line in the fight. I’m ok with this non-stoppage, it wasn’t as egregious as the Carwin vs Lesnar first round from my perspective, and obviously if it was stopped we would have missed a fight of the year candidate.
My point is this, the first round in the main event received the same score as the third round of the Vera Silva fight. The only thing those rounds have in common was the amount of people who were in the cage when they began and ended. Round 1 of that fight was a 10-7 round, and when people ask me in the future what a 10-7 round looks like, I will tell them this round.
The most interesting answer I have heard so far to the “what does a 10-7 round look like?” was a round like Edgar v Maynard, but with a point a deduction. I can certainly understand that, but that still means you are saying that you thought it should get the same score as the Vera Silva round. That just doesn’t hold water in my opinion.
We don’t need half point systems, and at the risk of sounding completely cliche, we would just be giving misinformed judges more tools to screw up decisions, and infuriate the analysts. The 10-7 round is an option for a reason, and the judges should utilize it. Yes, the 10-7 round is rare, as it should be, but so are rounds as one sided as that one. Especially in a title match. We don’t see many perfect games in baseball, let alone in the world series, but they happen. Just ask Yankee Don Larson (1956, game 5.)
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January 5, 5:40 pm
VERY well said. I have been wrangling trolls on youtube over this exact topic.
Thankyou for saying it so perfectly.