(MMA Judging) definitely needs to be changed, it needs to be improved. It needs to be totally dissected by a panel of people that are involved in the mixed martial arts. No special movie actors or special judges to come up with these rules.
(We need) people who are deeply rooted in the sport that can go and say, "Okay, wait a minute, should we give a fighter a full round just because he gets a takedown? What if he gets a takedown, and the other fighter immediately stands up on him? Should there even be any credit for that?" It's like throwing a jab and missing. It's trying to take a guy to the ground and try to do my game, but you lose that whole opportunity. Whereas, if you took him down and grounded and pounded him or passed his guard, that's a big deal. But if you just take people down, and they just keep standing up on ya, how are you being effective? You're really not, you're just losing energy, you're wasting energy.
And likewise with a striker. If you're a striker and you throw 100 punches but only land 10, and the other guy has only thrown 20 but he's landed 12, who's being more effective? And then on the ground thing, somebody takes somebody down, they're holding them there, but they're not really doing anything ... if you take someone down, and you're sitting in their guard and all you're doing in their guard is defending submissions, you've made a bad choice in taking that guy down. But (the judges) don't do that. They say, "Well, he got the takedown, that's huge. Give him the round because he got a takedown."
So it definitely needs to be cut up and looked at. Not maybe by somebody like me, but by somebody who's not favoring one style or one anything. You get a panel of people together and they decide, "Okay, we're going to put up this chart, so that at the end of each round they can put a check in whatever box, for red corner or blue corner, saying effective striking goes here, Octagon or cage control goes here, submission attempts, takedowns or throws, etc. Just cut it up that way and figure out exactly who deserves to win these fights. Because it is becoming more and more ... I hate to say it, but I'm starting to see a lot of things that I saw in boxing. In the past you could arguably say, "Okay this guy won this, but it was really close, so you coulda given it to the other guy because of this." And you had those kind of fights.
But now you are seeing ones that really don't make any sense at all - and more often. So there should be some way to get in there and do this before the purity of what we do starts to go in the crapper like it did in boxing. That's why boxing lost a lot of fans, and they went to MMA, because MMA was so pure, and it was this primeval thing. At the same time, ethical judging and just more competition ... a guy that was 10-0 could get beaten by a guy that was 5-4, whereas in boxing it wasn't like that. So I really want to see something happen quickly. Anytime we can do something to improve our sport, especially the judging, that needs to be done.
Marcus Davis talks to MMA Mania. Tonight he'll face Ben Saunders at UFC 106.