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Diaz 1, 2, 5
October 24, 2016
“I would like to promise and pledge to all of my supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic night – if I win,”
– Nathan Diaz.
The writers behind Saturday Night Live must sit awake at night and conclude they were very good people in a previous life; for they have been blessed by the 2016 U.S. election campaign, which has been described as the “gift that keeps on giving”. Of course, it’s all fun-and-games until ‘The Donald’ or Hilary get the nuclear codes but let’s not spoil the mood by contemplating the impending doom of humanity.
There’s an Irish slang word that could cut down most of the political commentary on this Election Cycle by 95% – and that word is “spoofer”.
A spoofer is a cross between a fool and a liar. We all knew one growing up. The type of guy who would come home from a nightclub, drunk as a skunk, bragging to anybody who will listen that he bagged 3 girls phone numbers – when, in reality, he got 1 number and she actually pulled the ol’ fake number switch-a-roo. Or the type of girl who would stroll into work on a Monday morning, strutting like a peacock, with a new hair colour saying she got it done by an in-demand hair-stylist – when, in fact, it came out of a bottle in the bathroom and cost five bucks.
Donald Trump is a spoofer.
I haven’t quite worked out if he’s merely a harmless spoofer or a dangerous, misogynistic, racist, sociopathic spoofer. Whatever the case may be – he likes hyperbole. Every story is an exaggeration; each tale of his wealth and business acumen taller than the previous version of the story.
He’s also very likeable. Or is it Alec Baldwin i’m thinking of?
“I’m Donald Trump – Believe Me”
Clinton, for her part, is summed up very easily with one word – ‘politician’. Cold, calculating, duplicitous and would likely stab you in the back with a spoon if it meant advancing her political ambition. Therein, perhaps, lies a large part of the reason this has been a relatively interesting, competitive race – up to a point.
It feels less a battle of ideology (Democrat v Republican, Left v Right) and more of a weary nation collectively saying “we’ve had enough of HER type around here but, seriously, our alternative is THIS guy?”.
The point at which the race for the Presidency fell apart can be described in 2 very succinct words: ‘recency bias‘.
‘The Donald’ has, most likely, delivered some good speeches in the past 18 months and developed more than a few likeable policy standpoints. He’s charmed many people on a one-to-one level with his affable nature and grand tales of business success and wealth accumulation. When election day rolls around, however, there will likely be one thing at the forefront of peoples minds when they cast their ballot.
“Grab them by the pussy“.
In a double whammy of epic proportions, the name “Billy Bush” will be forever entwined with these immortal words. A core reason Trump is facing an ignominuous heavy defeat is that the human brain is, universally, predisposed towards remembering the most recent, important thoughts it has had.
“where did it all go wrong”
Trump’s unwillingness (or inability) to accept the election result, and democratic will of the people, is worrying but not surprising given he has long suspected every defeat in his life is at the behest of corruption. I’ve an image in my head of a teenage Trump blaming his first school football defeat on deflated balls despite a 67-0 scoreline.
“global conspiracy to blame for this narrow 67-0 loss” – Trump
It’s not a unique character trait to refuse to acknowledge defeat and failure – by any means. There are 2 men sitting in Stockton, California (most likely stoned in a billowing plume of smoke) who share his concerns that dark forces are the real factor behind any of their ‘failures’ in fighting and in life.
“I make no excuses. It is what it is. I came up short. I took a chance and it didn’t pay off. I’ll be back” – Nick Diaz in the wake of his defeat to Carlos Condit.
I’m of course, kidding. Nick Diaz using McGregors humble post-fight words, thereby admitting he lost a fight fair-and-square, would be borderline comparable to the Pope admitting he has no real faith in the existence of God.
Every fight Nick lost has been described as a robbery, a travesty and a joke. No 15 minute or 25 minute fight has ever been accepted as a legitimate defeat – every one contains an asterix which usually stands for *They fucked me or *he ran. Moreover, much like Donald, every Judging defeat has a hint of a conspiracy in their eyes – an attempt to keep the ‘most real’ fighters from getting what’s owed to them.
It’s an impressive siege mentality. I’ve always wondered do the Diaz brothers and Trump actually believe their own words, deep down, that they’ve been robbed of a fight decision or an Emmy award by deep-rooted, grand works of collusion from the establishment or illuminati.
Nick Diaz, according to himself, is the victim of many crimes – mainly robbery. These crimes were reported in December 2002 (Chiba, Japan), August 2004 (Las Vegas), and horrendously 3 x Grand Larceny committed against him between November 2005 and April 2006. The Las Vegas Police Department were not notified.
Whatever your opinion on those fights – against Hironaka, Parisyan, Diego Sanchez, Joe Riggs and Sean Sherk – Nick is at least consistent that he never lost any of them. Entire fan forums have debated, in depth, how and why he was robbed in every single decision. Even in the most blatant case against Diego Sanchez, where Nick lost every single round, the Diaz faithful will not concede defeat. Trump would be proud.
“Conspiracy” – Nick Diaz
The waters get a little murky when you actually watch these fights back. Nick Diaz doesn’t tend to be on the receiving end of a one-sided demolition. A lot of these fights, and individual rounds, were close and competitive. Cases can be argued either way in almost every round.
His younger brother, Nate Diaz, seems to suffer an equal amount of robbery. They really should have a personal contact within the Police Department at this stage. He, too, believes his defeats were both the result of sinister forces and men refusing to do the honorable thing by standing in front of him and allowing him to punch them in the face. Not only are these men constant victims of crime but the elusive perpetrators always hit-n-run.
Just can’t catch a break.
Indeed, the reason Diaz feels he came out on the wrong side of the decision to the Irish scallywag, Conor McGregor, was the result of corruption, collusion, conspiracy and, of course, track-and-field.
“Glad you FINALLY stopped running Conor”
Is there any merit to these claims? Let’s take a look.
The fight was judged by Nevada State Athletic Commission appointed Judges and promoted by the UFC. Could either body have a vested interest in McGregor securing an unjust, unwarranted decision victory? Absolutely.
Is corruption in combat sports unheard of? Absolutely not.
So could brown envelopes of money (or a shared mutual interest) have prompted the Judges to be paid-off or institutionally biased towards McGregor? Yep!
Nevada wanted nothing more than McGregor to keep returning with his band of followers and the UFC absolutely needed their star to win this fight.
Nate Diaz, for his part, is kinda’ right when he said “they can’t have a guy like me winning (this fight)”. One win over Conor McGregor was enough to propel Nate Diaz into stardom and a $2 million disclosed purse for the rematch. However, the strong likelihood is when you take McGregor out of the equation, Diaz remains an average PPV draw. A Diaz vs Tony Ferguson headline-fight would struggle to break 400,000 buys. McGregor vs a random guy in a clown costume does north of 1.3 million buys.
‘Uncle Dana’ was more than happy for Nate to get one big win, further boosting his profile as a rebel-without-a-cause. The paucity of stars beyond McGregor is self-evident; so any circumstance that helped in elevating a fighters standing with the wider public was a great thing for the UFC. So, one was good – Two in a row and Dana would be locked in a darkened room, hastily packing his belongings to go retire to an Island off the coast of Peru with his $360 million.
McGregor and Rousey are the Golden Geese. The former was coming off a high-profile strangling by Diaz in March and the latter was kicked in the face and straight into hibernation. The UFC clearly could not afford its 2 biggest stars both potentially hitting 0-2 skids.
Where this cloak-and-daggers story actually falls apart at the seams, into a complete nonsense work of fiction, is in the devil of the detail.
It starts with the NSAC and, particularly, Pat Lundvall. She is not the type of woman who appears amenable to brown paper envelopes, full of cash, sliding across her desk and into her purse with a wink-and-nod. In fact, she is often perceived to be on the far end of that spectrum – a stickler for strict application of regulations and a zealous desire to implement them judicially.
Secondly, and more importantly, i feel most objective people scored the fight similarly to the Judges. McGregor 1 and 4 clearly. Diaz 3 and 5 (less clearly). Round 2 being the most interesting from both a neutral, and judging, perspective.
Commissioner Pat Lundvall
The 10-Point-Must-System borrowed from boxing leads to a lot of confusion and has plenty of detractors. For a start, MMA is not boxing. I feel i need to state the obvious. The two sports are fundamentally different and that’s really important to remind people.
Believe me. (We will miss Trump-isms).
Dropping an opponent in boxing tends to result in an automatic 10-8 round being awarded. Subliminally, this rule does confuse a lot of lay observers of MMA as they don’t dissociate the 10-Point-Must System from boxing.
Consider the 2nd Round of Diaz-McGregor 2. Within the first 45 seconds of the 2nd Round, Diaz was on the seat of his pants. Twice. McGregor first connected with a beautifully timed counter left-hook that clearly shut Nate’s brain (and balance) off for a fraction of a second. Rogan, on commentary, responded with a monotone “he tagged him”.
“tagged him Mike” -“umm. Joe?”
He was clearly dropped. The second time it was (another) straight left down the pipe, through Diaz guard, and he fell to his pants again. For the lay observer, used to the boxing model, this is a 10-7 McGregor round regardless of what Nate does next – which clearly is nonsense in MMA terms.
With 3 minutes, 10 seconds left on the clock in the 2nd round, Joe Rogan remarked on commentary “(Diaz) not just unable to get into a flow, he’s not able to get success with anything yet”. Which was roughly the most impartial, accurate thing he said in a wildly biased, weed-loving-induced commentary.
1 minute, 53 seconds left to go, Rogan said “(Conor) is getting more and more confident, he’s standing right in front of Nate and outboxing him”.
1 minute 30 seconds to go, Rogan: “Nate putting pressure on him, he senses Conor slowing down”. This was the first of many ridiculous statements Rogan made in a long list of ridiculous statements. Conor exhibited no signs of exhaustion (yet!), in fact the next 30 seconds should be watched with Muted commentary. McGregor re-set his Octagon position twice and traded combinations with Diaz.
53 seconds left. The first time Rogan raised his voice into a shriek – strange considering in any other fight he’d have shrieked twice at the knockdowns that preceded it – Conor was backpeddling and lost his balance. There was no strike that caused this yet a combination of Rogan screaming with excitement for his buddy Nate, assisted by Mike Goldberg casually saying “Nate rocked him”, led to a perception Conor had been dropped. He hadn’t.
45 seconds to go, they clinch. They remain in this clinch for 20 seconds, during which time Conor threw and landed as many strikes as Diaz. The remainder of the round ends with McGregor slipping punches.
Fans have to contend with 3 things when judging this Round and often they are 3 irreconcilable things.
1. Their inherent bias. If they are a Nate Diaz fan they will view this round through a different prism.
2. Commentary bias. Rogan barely raised his voice when Conor dropped Nate twice, but the tone of his voice raised when Nate landed anything of note.
3. Recency bias. Even if you’re a neutral, you’re going to remember the last minute more clearly than the 4 minutes that preceded it. Nate grabbed the last minute of the round by the pussy. Hard to argue otherwise.
Let’s analyse this in a complete vacuum. No commentary. No bias.
Mr. Impartial
The first 3 minutes 30 of the round saw Nate Diaz dropped twice and Conor McGregor completely dominate him. If we score the round based on that portion, then it’s a clear 10-8 for McGregor. The next 30 seconds were traded equally. The last minute, Nate threw and landed more shots but none hurt/wobbled/rocked McGregor – but he clearly won the last minute.
This adds up, in totality, to a clear 10-9 round for the Irishman.
There are some valid reasons an impartial observer, watching the action with no commentary, could award the 2nd Round to Nate Diaz. One is that they were swayed by the hardwiring of their brain into placing too much of an emphasis on the last thing they’ve seen in the Round.
The other is called the ‘availability heuristic ‘.
This is defined as “a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts.”
Like Joe Rogan, the first thing most people thought towards the end of the 2nd round was “here we go again!”.
In the first fight, Conor dominated Round 1 before fading in the face of a Diaz onslaught in Round 2. History seemed to be repeating itself. Our brains automatically flashed back to that day in March where McGregor wilted from the moment the 1-2 from Diaz landed flush. Subliminally, and subconsciously, we saw the same pattern repeating and our immediate thoughts at the end of the Round were “wow, the same thing almost happened”. So we allowed this to skew our decision-making and award Diaz a round that no qualified, competent Judge could ever award to him.
2016 has seen many questionable Judging decisions. Joe Lauzon v Jim Miller was an extremely dubious decision, with most observers scoring it 29-28 in Lauzon’s favour. Carlos Condit v Robbie Lawler was a highly contentious decision. In both cases, i feel the Judges allowed recency bias towards ends of rounds to cloud their scoring of the round.
Jim Miller throwing a strike v Joe Lauzon
The 10-Point-Must-System is not perfect and has some fundamental flaws. The most important flaw is an intrinsic one: MMA is a sport. Boxing is another sport. MMA is using boxing judging practices and applying them to a completely different sport.
Critics have suggested the UFC should implement Pride judging criteria or simply Judge a fight not based on rounds but on the totality of the fight. There are positive arguments for these changes and inherent issues with them.
The truth is our availability heuristic and recency bias makes all Judging systems vulnerable to the hardwiring of the human brain. A fighter could dominate the first 16 minutes of a 5-round fight yet our brain could allow us to award the fight to the opposing fighter who (equally) dominated the last 9 minutes. This makes no sense given it’s the totality of the fight is what counts – otherwise why bother with Rounds or Time Limits – yet is a very real function of the human brain to place additional emphasis on the last thing we see and remember.
Fundamental recency bias would make all judging criteria imperfect in the sense they are all vulnerable to the same problems.
My suggestions to “fix” the issue are as follows:
1. Don’t try to ‘fix’ anything. “Nothing to see here, move along”.
Close and controversial decisions affect a fighters career but from a fan perspective they generate chat, publicity, attention and discourse. These are all great things. It’s always good to have something to passionately debate with people in a bar or barbershop. The vaunted Youtube comments section would simply not be the same without “Diaz 1, 2, 5” , “McTapper ran” and “McGoat 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”.
2. Scrap Octagon-side Judging (where Judges are vulnerable to audience interaction).
A Judge would not be human if they were not subconsciously, at times, influenced by the crowd. The loud cheers when McGregor slipped in Round 2 could very easily be perceived as a knock-down in the mind of a Judge, who has a fixed vantage point and one look at the incident in real-time. If a Judge sneezed at that very moment or his view was obscured by the referee, he would simply let the crowd cheers fill-in-the-gap of what he missed and thereby influence his scoring.
One solution to that would be to move the Judges to a sound-proof booth backstage and draft independent observers in to make sure they are judging the fight fairly, with no commentary bias or outside influence. Beware men carrying wads of cash in brown envelopes.
3. Scrap the 10-Point-Must-Criteria:
Introudce Pride or One FC style-systems. Scrap scoring-by-round in favour of scoring-by-fight. This is less-scientific and compartmentalised but most qualified Judges should be able to get a feel for who is winning the fight. This scoring system is a little more arbitrary, though, and fighters may be more keen to secure a finish to avoid it going to the Judges.
4. Finally, my personal suggestion:
Keep the 10-Point-Must system and bring it into the 21st century.
Instead of 3 Judges, make it 5. Equip them with sound-proofed headphones to watch the fight Octagon-side, immune from influence. Hell, why not 7. As long as i’m not the guy who has to tell Mike Tyson to move from the Front Row to make way for extra Judges…
On a simplistic level, the likelihood of 7-well-trained Judges arriving at a consensus incorrect decision is far less than that of 3 Judges doing the same thing.
The last word on this, as always, must go to the Notorious and it applies equally to Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz:
“They don’t have to like it. They can even hate it. But they will be forced to accept it”.
https://boltossmma.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/diaz-1-2-5/
October 24, 2016
“I would like to promise and pledge to all of my supporters and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic night – if I win,”
– Nathan Diaz.
The writers behind Saturday Night Live must sit awake at night and conclude they were very good people in a previous life; for they have been blessed by the 2016 U.S. election campaign, which has been described as the “gift that keeps on giving”. Of course, it’s all fun-and-games until ‘The Donald’ or Hilary get the nuclear codes but let’s not spoil the mood by contemplating the impending doom of humanity.
There’s an Irish slang word that could cut down most of the political commentary on this Election Cycle by 95% – and that word is “spoofer”.
A spoofer is a cross between a fool and a liar. We all knew one growing up. The type of guy who would come home from a nightclub, drunk as a skunk, bragging to anybody who will listen that he bagged 3 girls phone numbers – when, in reality, he got 1 number and she actually pulled the ol’ fake number switch-a-roo. Or the type of girl who would stroll into work on a Monday morning, strutting like a peacock, with a new hair colour saying she got it done by an in-demand hair-stylist – when, in fact, it came out of a bottle in the bathroom and cost five bucks.
Donald Trump is a spoofer.
I haven’t quite worked out if he’s merely a harmless spoofer or a dangerous, misogynistic, racist, sociopathic spoofer. Whatever the case may be – he likes hyperbole. Every story is an exaggeration; each tale of his wealth and business acumen taller than the previous version of the story.
He’s also very likeable. Or is it Alec Baldwin i’m thinking of?
“I’m Donald Trump – Believe Me”
Clinton, for her part, is summed up very easily with one word – ‘politician’. Cold, calculating, duplicitous and would likely stab you in the back with a spoon if it meant advancing her political ambition. Therein, perhaps, lies a large part of the reason this has been a relatively interesting, competitive race – up to a point.
It feels less a battle of ideology (Democrat v Republican, Left v Right) and more of a weary nation collectively saying “we’ve had enough of HER type around here but, seriously, our alternative is THIS guy?”.
The point at which the race for the Presidency fell apart can be described in 2 very succinct words: ‘recency bias‘.
‘The Donald’ has, most likely, delivered some good speeches in the past 18 months and developed more than a few likeable policy standpoints. He’s charmed many people on a one-to-one level with his affable nature and grand tales of business success and wealth accumulation. When election day rolls around, however, there will likely be one thing at the forefront of peoples minds when they cast their ballot.
“Grab them by the pussy“.
In a double whammy of epic proportions, the name “Billy Bush” will be forever entwined with these immortal words. A core reason Trump is facing an ignominuous heavy defeat is that the human brain is, universally, predisposed towards remembering the most recent, important thoughts it has had.
“where did it all go wrong”
Trump’s unwillingness (or inability) to accept the election result, and democratic will of the people, is worrying but not surprising given he has long suspected every defeat in his life is at the behest of corruption. I’ve an image in my head of a teenage Trump blaming his first school football defeat on deflated balls despite a 67-0 scoreline.
“global conspiracy to blame for this narrow 67-0 loss” – Trump
It’s not a unique character trait to refuse to acknowledge defeat and failure – by any means. There are 2 men sitting in Stockton, California (most likely stoned in a billowing plume of smoke) who share his concerns that dark forces are the real factor behind any of their ‘failures’ in fighting and in life.
“I make no excuses. It is what it is. I came up short. I took a chance and it didn’t pay off. I’ll be back” – Nick Diaz in the wake of his defeat to Carlos Condit.
I’m of course, kidding. Nick Diaz using McGregors humble post-fight words, thereby admitting he lost a fight fair-and-square, would be borderline comparable to the Pope admitting he has no real faith in the existence of God.
Every fight Nick lost has been described as a robbery, a travesty and a joke. No 15 minute or 25 minute fight has ever been accepted as a legitimate defeat – every one contains an asterix which usually stands for *They fucked me or *he ran. Moreover, much like Donald, every Judging defeat has a hint of a conspiracy in their eyes – an attempt to keep the ‘most real’ fighters from getting what’s owed to them.
It’s an impressive siege mentality. I’ve always wondered do the Diaz brothers and Trump actually believe their own words, deep down, that they’ve been robbed of a fight decision or an Emmy award by deep-rooted, grand works of collusion from the establishment or illuminati.
Nick Diaz, according to himself, is the victim of many crimes – mainly robbery. These crimes were reported in December 2002 (Chiba, Japan), August 2004 (Las Vegas), and horrendously 3 x Grand Larceny committed against him between November 2005 and April 2006. The Las Vegas Police Department were not notified.
Whatever your opinion on those fights – against Hironaka, Parisyan, Diego Sanchez, Joe Riggs and Sean Sherk – Nick is at least consistent that he never lost any of them. Entire fan forums have debated, in depth, how and why he was robbed in every single decision. Even in the most blatant case against Diego Sanchez, where Nick lost every single round, the Diaz faithful will not concede defeat. Trump would be proud.
“Conspiracy” – Nick Diaz
The waters get a little murky when you actually watch these fights back. Nick Diaz doesn’t tend to be on the receiving end of a one-sided demolition. A lot of these fights, and individual rounds, were close and competitive. Cases can be argued either way in almost every round.
His younger brother, Nate Diaz, seems to suffer an equal amount of robbery. They really should have a personal contact within the Police Department at this stage. He, too, believes his defeats were both the result of sinister forces and men refusing to do the honorable thing by standing in front of him and allowing him to punch them in the face. Not only are these men constant victims of crime but the elusive perpetrators always hit-n-run.
Just can’t catch a break.
Indeed, the reason Diaz feels he came out on the wrong side of the decision to the Irish scallywag, Conor McGregor, was the result of corruption, collusion, conspiracy and, of course, track-and-field.
“Glad you FINALLY stopped running Conor”
Is there any merit to these claims? Let’s take a look.
The fight was judged by Nevada State Athletic Commission appointed Judges and promoted by the UFC. Could either body have a vested interest in McGregor securing an unjust, unwarranted decision victory? Absolutely.
Is corruption in combat sports unheard of? Absolutely not.
So could brown envelopes of money (or a shared mutual interest) have prompted the Judges to be paid-off or institutionally biased towards McGregor? Yep!
Nevada wanted nothing more than McGregor to keep returning with his band of followers and the UFC absolutely needed their star to win this fight.
Nate Diaz, for his part, is kinda’ right when he said “they can’t have a guy like me winning (this fight)”. One win over Conor McGregor was enough to propel Nate Diaz into stardom and a $2 million disclosed purse for the rematch. However, the strong likelihood is when you take McGregor out of the equation, Diaz remains an average PPV draw. A Diaz vs Tony Ferguson headline-fight would struggle to break 400,000 buys. McGregor vs a random guy in a clown costume does north of 1.3 million buys.
‘Uncle Dana’ was more than happy for Nate to get one big win, further boosting his profile as a rebel-without-a-cause. The paucity of stars beyond McGregor is self-evident; so any circumstance that helped in elevating a fighters standing with the wider public was a great thing for the UFC. So, one was good – Two in a row and Dana would be locked in a darkened room, hastily packing his belongings to go retire to an Island off the coast of Peru with his $360 million.
McGregor and Rousey are the Golden Geese. The former was coming off a high-profile strangling by Diaz in March and the latter was kicked in the face and straight into hibernation. The UFC clearly could not afford its 2 biggest stars both potentially hitting 0-2 skids.
Where this cloak-and-daggers story actually falls apart at the seams, into a complete nonsense work of fiction, is in the devil of the detail.
It starts with the NSAC and, particularly, Pat Lundvall. She is not the type of woman who appears amenable to brown paper envelopes, full of cash, sliding across her desk and into her purse with a wink-and-nod. In fact, she is often perceived to be on the far end of that spectrum – a stickler for strict application of regulations and a zealous desire to implement them judicially.
Secondly, and more importantly, i feel most objective people scored the fight similarly to the Judges. McGregor 1 and 4 clearly. Diaz 3 and 5 (less clearly). Round 2 being the most interesting from both a neutral, and judging, perspective.
Commissioner Pat Lundvall
The 10-Point-Must-System borrowed from boxing leads to a lot of confusion and has plenty of detractors. For a start, MMA is not boxing. I feel i need to state the obvious. The two sports are fundamentally different and that’s really important to remind people.
Believe me. (We will miss Trump-isms).
Dropping an opponent in boxing tends to result in an automatic 10-8 round being awarded. Subliminally, this rule does confuse a lot of lay observers of MMA as they don’t dissociate the 10-Point-Must System from boxing.
Consider the 2nd Round of Diaz-McGregor 2. Within the first 45 seconds of the 2nd Round, Diaz was on the seat of his pants. Twice. McGregor first connected with a beautifully timed counter left-hook that clearly shut Nate’s brain (and balance) off for a fraction of a second. Rogan, on commentary, responded with a monotone “he tagged him”.
“tagged him Mike” -“umm. Joe?”
He was clearly dropped. The second time it was (another) straight left down the pipe, through Diaz guard, and he fell to his pants again. For the lay observer, used to the boxing model, this is a 10-7 McGregor round regardless of what Nate does next – which clearly is nonsense in MMA terms.
With 3 minutes, 10 seconds left on the clock in the 2nd round, Joe Rogan remarked on commentary “(Diaz) not just unable to get into a flow, he’s not able to get success with anything yet”. Which was roughly the most impartial, accurate thing he said in a wildly biased, weed-loving-induced commentary.
1 minute, 53 seconds left to go, Rogan said “(Conor) is getting more and more confident, he’s standing right in front of Nate and outboxing him”.
1 minute 30 seconds to go, Rogan: “Nate putting pressure on him, he senses Conor slowing down”. This was the first of many ridiculous statements Rogan made in a long list of ridiculous statements. Conor exhibited no signs of exhaustion (yet!), in fact the next 30 seconds should be watched with Muted commentary. McGregor re-set his Octagon position twice and traded combinations with Diaz.
53 seconds left. The first time Rogan raised his voice into a shriek – strange considering in any other fight he’d have shrieked twice at the knockdowns that preceded it – Conor was backpeddling and lost his balance. There was no strike that caused this yet a combination of Rogan screaming with excitement for his buddy Nate, assisted by Mike Goldberg casually saying “Nate rocked him”, led to a perception Conor had been dropped. He hadn’t.
45 seconds to go, they clinch. They remain in this clinch for 20 seconds, during which time Conor threw and landed as many strikes as Diaz. The remainder of the round ends with McGregor slipping punches.
Fans have to contend with 3 things when judging this Round and often they are 3 irreconcilable things.
1. Their inherent bias. If they are a Nate Diaz fan they will view this round through a different prism.
2. Commentary bias. Rogan barely raised his voice when Conor dropped Nate twice, but the tone of his voice raised when Nate landed anything of note.
3. Recency bias. Even if you’re a neutral, you’re going to remember the last minute more clearly than the 4 minutes that preceded it. Nate grabbed the last minute of the round by the pussy. Hard to argue otherwise.
Let’s analyse this in a complete vacuum. No commentary. No bias.
Mr. Impartial
The first 3 minutes 30 of the round saw Nate Diaz dropped twice and Conor McGregor completely dominate him. If we score the round based on that portion, then it’s a clear 10-8 for McGregor. The next 30 seconds were traded equally. The last minute, Nate threw and landed more shots but none hurt/wobbled/rocked McGregor – but he clearly won the last minute.
This adds up, in totality, to a clear 10-9 round for the Irishman.
There are some valid reasons an impartial observer, watching the action with no commentary, could award the 2nd Round to Nate Diaz. One is that they were swayed by the hardwiring of their brain into placing too much of an emphasis on the last thing they’ve seen in the Round.
The other is called the ‘availability heuristic ‘.
This is defined as “a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts.”
Like Joe Rogan, the first thing most people thought towards the end of the 2nd round was “here we go again!”.
In the first fight, Conor dominated Round 1 before fading in the face of a Diaz onslaught in Round 2. History seemed to be repeating itself. Our brains automatically flashed back to that day in March where McGregor wilted from the moment the 1-2 from Diaz landed flush. Subliminally, and subconsciously, we saw the same pattern repeating and our immediate thoughts at the end of the Round were “wow, the same thing almost happened”. So we allowed this to skew our decision-making and award Diaz a round that no qualified, competent Judge could ever award to him.
2016 has seen many questionable Judging decisions. Joe Lauzon v Jim Miller was an extremely dubious decision, with most observers scoring it 29-28 in Lauzon’s favour. Carlos Condit v Robbie Lawler was a highly contentious decision. In both cases, i feel the Judges allowed recency bias towards ends of rounds to cloud their scoring of the round.
Jim Miller throwing a strike v Joe Lauzon
The 10-Point-Must-System is not perfect and has some fundamental flaws. The most important flaw is an intrinsic one: MMA is a sport. Boxing is another sport. MMA is using boxing judging practices and applying them to a completely different sport.
Critics have suggested the UFC should implement Pride judging criteria or simply Judge a fight not based on rounds but on the totality of the fight. There are positive arguments for these changes and inherent issues with them.
The truth is our availability heuristic and recency bias makes all Judging systems vulnerable to the hardwiring of the human brain. A fighter could dominate the first 16 minutes of a 5-round fight yet our brain could allow us to award the fight to the opposing fighter who (equally) dominated the last 9 minutes. This makes no sense given it’s the totality of the fight is what counts – otherwise why bother with Rounds or Time Limits – yet is a very real function of the human brain to place additional emphasis on the last thing we see and remember.
Fundamental recency bias would make all judging criteria imperfect in the sense they are all vulnerable to the same problems.
My suggestions to “fix” the issue are as follows:
1. Don’t try to ‘fix’ anything. “Nothing to see here, move along”.
Close and controversial decisions affect a fighters career but from a fan perspective they generate chat, publicity, attention and discourse. These are all great things. It’s always good to have something to passionately debate with people in a bar or barbershop. The vaunted Youtube comments section would simply not be the same without “Diaz 1, 2, 5” , “McTapper ran” and “McGoat 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”.
2. Scrap Octagon-side Judging (where Judges are vulnerable to audience interaction).
A Judge would not be human if they were not subconsciously, at times, influenced by the crowd. The loud cheers when McGregor slipped in Round 2 could very easily be perceived as a knock-down in the mind of a Judge, who has a fixed vantage point and one look at the incident in real-time. If a Judge sneezed at that very moment or his view was obscured by the referee, he would simply let the crowd cheers fill-in-the-gap of what he missed and thereby influence his scoring.
One solution to that would be to move the Judges to a sound-proof booth backstage and draft independent observers in to make sure they are judging the fight fairly, with no commentary bias or outside influence. Beware men carrying wads of cash in brown envelopes.
3. Scrap the 10-Point-Must-Criteria:
Introudce Pride or One FC style-systems. Scrap scoring-by-round in favour of scoring-by-fight. This is less-scientific and compartmentalised but most qualified Judges should be able to get a feel for who is winning the fight. This scoring system is a little more arbitrary, though, and fighters may be more keen to secure a finish to avoid it going to the Judges.
4. Finally, my personal suggestion:
Keep the 10-Point-Must system and bring it into the 21st century.
Instead of 3 Judges, make it 5. Equip them with sound-proofed headphones to watch the fight Octagon-side, immune from influence. Hell, why not 7. As long as i’m not the guy who has to tell Mike Tyson to move from the Front Row to make way for extra Judges…
On a simplistic level, the likelihood of 7-well-trained Judges arriving at a consensus incorrect decision is far less than that of 3 Judges doing the same thing.
The last word on this, as always, must go to the Notorious and it applies equally to Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz:
“They don’t have to like it. They can even hate it. But they will be forced to accept it”.
https://boltossmma.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/diaz-1-2-5/
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