UFC 118 Preview: Fight Watch: B.J. Penn vs Frankie Edgar and the Accountability of Judges

BS scores like the 50-45 must be explained.

I would love to get Cecil Peoples and Douglas Crosby into an interrogation room and Good Cop Bad Cop the bejesus out of them until I got real explanations for all the bullshit scorecards. While we are at it, bring in Hot Tub and Tan Dan as well.

I think including an explanation for a score would be very interesting and beneficial. It really would’ve helped in close decision fights like rampage v. griffin and shogun v. machida. This would also be very good for some judges, like Cecil Peoples whom I don’t even think watches the fights in front of him.

I think it would also be beneficial if the judge’s had monitors in front of them. I really can’t get over the fact that they don’t—I don’t see the reasoning behind not giving judge’s monitors.

1) TV monitors for all three judges.
2) Better training for judges. (goes for refs too). Most judges probably know less than Goldie when it comes to what they’re seeing. And that’s a shame. It won’t matter what point system you use, so long as you have people who don’t know what they’re seeing judging the fight.
3) Finally, Better rules set. The 10 point system has to be better defined. As it is, there is too much room for interpretation. It’s almost as bad as figure skating, IMO. I really believe damage and effective striking should count for a lot more than they seemingly do these days.

I don’t know, I think judges are too immersed in the atmosphere of the event. The massive amount of unconscious signals that are constantly being received at an event like this can really mess with your objective appraisal of a situation.

Maybe fucking put them in a closed, quiet room (1 room per judge) with good, high-quality monitors showing all angles of the fight, and with only those hanging microphones above the octagon as audio feed so they can only hear the fight itself. Basically put them in a situation where they need to appraise the round on a conscious metric rather than “gut instinct”.

Educate judges too, okay? I don’t know. Fuck.

O.o I do the swinging meter in my head too. Each action moves it one way or the other. Depending on how far it is, gives a 10-9 or 10-8 round pretty easily.

But would only fuel controversy by givingg critics more ammo so it will never happen.

reminds me of the med school professors that kick students out of lab for using online resources instead of books.

sorry, unrelated i know

That is the only way I judge a fight. Not that my opinion matters.

and maybe I need to watch it again but were there really not that many people that thought Edgar won? I’m not saying I agreed with the 50-45 but a 48-47 scoreline didn’t seem that controversial.

People cried incessantly over Shogun-Machida 1 and this was easily as bad or worse of a decision and everyone had a like “weell whaddya gonna do” attitude about it.

My 2 theories are that:

Edgar exceeded expectations so people thought he deserved the win because he didn’t go out and get KO"d in round one as everyone anticipated.

BJ Penn didn’t looked prepared, so to some people even though he really won, he deserved to lose because he didn’t look as dedicated to this fight.

Also re judges:

I think if Judges had to write ‘why’ they scored the way they did, it would force them to evaluate their choices and if they actually had an actual reason for scoring it to someone or if it was merely a ‘feeling’.
The process itself may cause them to self-evaluate and this may help with odd scores.

I am currently on page 15 of that UG forum that crosby started. And honestly having nothing to do with his scorecard. The guy comes off as an ass. It makes me really fucking sad that someone who is this immature/egocentric/trollish is a professional mma judge. I can’t describe the way i feel about this. this man shows neither professionalism or really and kind of dignity. I can’t really explain how bad this guy should be fired, the only way I can is for people to see his fucking insane comments for themselves….. a sad sad thing.

Fighters should be allowed to ask for a commission to hold a review of scorecards with the commission and judges who scored the fight. If the commission feels the decision was one that merits such a review, they can put it together, or deny the request.

What did Andy Roberts see that led him to score a 49-46 fight for Edgar? I have no idea because he didn’t find it necessary to drop peyote and report his visions on a message board.

Hilarious, bravo sir.

though I could also see refs just weaseling by with a bunch of non-answers. Think of the last fight you thought was grossly misjudged, and how many judges could use these to (not) explain their scores.

Fighter X-
“fought harder/better than opponent”
“looked better that round”
“did what he needed to do to win the round”
“controlled the fight more”
“did more to win fight”
“did more damage to opponent”

I said this in a similar article recently here, but the growing problem in MMA in the near future is going to be the growing divide between the pace of evolution of fighters and everything that supports the fights (referees, judges, rules, etc…).

MMA fighters (and MMA fighting styles) are evolving much, much faster than the rest of the sport and I think that will eventually be too big of an issue to ignore.