Quinton Jackson knew he wasn't the better man at tonight's UFC 123 bout with Lyoto Machida.

After the fight Rampage immediately raised Machida's arm, then after the decision told announcer Joe Rogan that "Machida whipped my ass tonight. Even though I don't want to, I think an immediate rematch would be the fair thing."

But it's not the kind of decision where you can really pillory the judges for blowing the call. The problem is the round by round 10 point must scoring system, not necessarily the judging. It would have been perfectly reasonable to give Jackson the first two rounds 10-9 each. Both rounds were extremely close.

The problem is the third round was definitive with Machida scoring a knock down on the feet and utterly dominating on the ground with mounted position and a tight arm bar attempt.

The 10 point must system wasn't handed down by the gods. It was grafted onto MMA in the late 1990s by regulators familiar with boxing. Japan's Pride Fighting Championships used a very simple "pick a winner" scoring system that many still feel is more true to the essence of the sport. After all the point of MMA is to see who would win the fight, not who can best game the system and score more points.

Admittedly the Pride system is very open to abuse and offers even less insight to the thinking of the judges than the 10 point must system. 

I'm open to a complete rethink of MMA scoring. Why not a 20 point system with most definitive rounds being scored 20-15 but close rounds being scored 20-19 or 20-18. That way Jackson could've been given the first two rounds 20-19 and lost the third 15-20 and then we'd have the rightful winner with his hand raised at the end of the night. 

What do you think?