People might call me a BJ Penn fan boy, but I have no shame saying it: the judges' decision for the Penn-Edgar fight was bullshit.  Being an admitted Penn fan, I'm going to leave my personal opinion out as much as possible.  Here is a round by round analysis of the fight by MMA analysts, writers, and computer generated scoring systems together.

There is hardly any dispute amongst MMA analysts, columnists, and fans alike that BJ Penn won the first two rounds, so I’m not going to go into those two at all.  Apparently the only people on the planet who thought Edgar won even one of those rounds were sitting at the judges’ table.

Round 3 was far closer and more difficult to score.  Jordan Breen, Greg Savage, and Mike Fridley of sherdog.com, and Ray Hui of mmafighting.com all scored it 10-9 for BJ Penn.  Brent Brookhouse of bloodyelbow.com and no given author of mmaweekly.com both scored it 10-9 for Frankie Edgar.  Fightmetric.com scored it 10-9 Penn.

The 4th round was the most evenly matched.  Sherdog.com's Breen, Savage, and Fridley scored it a draw, 10-9 for Edgar, and 10-9 for Penn, respectively.  Hui scored it 10-9 Edgar, Brookhouse scored it 10-9 Penn, and mmaweekly.com scored it 10-9 Penn.  Fightmetric.com scored it a 10-10 draw.

The 5th and final round went unanimously to Frankie Edgar, so again, I’m not going to go into it.  I will say, however, that most people agree Penn won the first two rounds at least as, if not more decisively than Edgar won this last round.

This brings up our final tally of the seven sources who scored this fight.  Jordan Breen and Mike Fridley both scored it 49-46 Penn.  Brent Brookhouse, Greg Savage, and Ray Hui all scored it 48-47 Penn.  The unknown author from mmaweekly.com scored it a 48-48 draw.  Fightmetric.com scored it 49-47 for Penn, outpointing Edgar 373-263 over the entirety of the fight. 

FightMetric has its flaws, and I agree it does not always score the fight accurately; however, it does always score it objectively.  FightMetric is based off standardized and indisputable statistics, which does a very good job of scoring striking matches.  It does lose some credibility if and when the fight his the ground, especially when trying to score the magnitude of ground and pound, positional dominance, scrambles, and the severity of submission attempts.  In this fight however, all but five seconds of the fight was a kickboxing match.  In both his takedowns, Edgar was unable to hold Penn down long enough to even throw one punch.  How much should a takedown in which zero damage is inflicted count to score points?  Needless to say, FightMetric had BJ Penn winning in their ten-point must system (49-47), FightMetric point system (373-263), and total performance rating (52-45).

            I admit to being a BJ Penn fanboy, but here, I tried to leave out my own opinion entirely.  Out of the five very credible MMA analysts I used as sources, each and every one scored the fight with Penn coming out as the winner.  One unnamed source called it a draw, and one computer generated scoring system had Penn the winner in all 3 of its scoring categories.  Once again, I hold that the BJ Penn won this fight, and the decision is incorrect.

 

Post a comment with your thoughts, agree or diagree.  Also, let me know if there are ANY sources, with the exception of the blind UFC judging table, who scored the fight in favor of Frankie Edgar.

 

Sources:

http://www.fightmetric.com/fights/Edgar-Penn.html

http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/UFC-112-Results-amp-Live-Play-by-Play-23744

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/4/9/1413691/ufc-112-invincible-live-results

http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=11205&zoneid=13

http://www.mmafighting.com/2010/04/10/ufc-112-live-blog-bj-penn-vs-frankie-edgar-round-by-round-upda/

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