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New interview with Big John McCarthy over the weekend on Submission Radio
[YT]mgYL999e2So[/YT]
Some of the Topics Covered
-Almost fighting at UFC 1
-His injury at UFC on Fox Werdum vs Browne
-The Ross Pearson/Diego Sanchez fight and Decision
-Using Diego Sanchez fights to teach Judges scoring criteria
-How to improve judging
-What the exact process to become a judge is
-If fighters would make good judges
-How the GSP Hendricks fight should have been scored
-How improved scoring would lead to scoring fights like Woodley vs Macdonald
-The Jason High Incident, and if the punishment was fair
-Teaching Refs to handle their emotions when fighters become aggressive
-TRT and the way the commission handled it's ban
-Why he wasn't in EA Sports UFC
-Craziest Fan experiences
-If the commission takes Ref's sizes into account depending on the fighter size
-Knees to a downed opponent
also answered some Sherdog Fan Questions from this thread:
http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/f2/give-us-your-questions-big-john-mccarthy-2765869/
Some Quotes
Thoughts on Judges decision on the Sanchez vs. Pearson fight
“It happens. Judges can get sucked in by antics, they can get sucked in by someone’s persona and the way that they go about acting like something doesn’t hurt.”
"It's not so much that you have to land the most. A lot of times we get these punch stats where it'll say 'well this fighter landed more punches', that doesn't matter."
“It’s the punches that land and what power and effect is on them, is what we look at as a judge. And honestly, in that fight in my opinion, it wasn’t a good decision. I thought Marcos Rosales - who is someone that I work with a lot here in California - I thought that he had the right score. I thought that Ross Pearson won every round. I didn’t think it was that hard of a fight to score, but unfortunately those things happen. I think the UFC took care of it the proper way, you know, gave Ross Pearson his win bonus."
"At the time, Diego think he won the fight, because he's fighting hard, and he doesn't know everything that's going on in the fashion that someone who's watching it does, but if you go back and watch the fight, Ross Pearson did what he was supposed to do. He won the fight."
What can be done to improve the judging outcomes in MMA
“Well, I honestly believe that the judging criteria itself needs to change. The criteria that we use, what's established under the unified rules is the criteria for the judges, is something that I wrote with with Jeff Blatnick back in 1998, 99, and it’s antiquated, it’s wrong, you know. It was at a time when this sport was young and had a lot of political pressure against it.”
"The other thing that needs to change is, we have way, way too much variance between a 10-9 and a 10-8 round. That needs to change. We need to make a 10-9 round what it should be, a very close round.”
“A 10-9 is an extremely close round. Great, let's keep it that way. But a 10-8 round needs to be the round where it's easy to say fighter "A" beat fighter "B" in this round. No problem, give them 10-8, and then when we start talking about guys that are doing big damage and domination in the fight, like we get some 10-8’s now, that’s now a 10-7 round, because that’s going to open up the scoring and make it more appropriate.”
How improving judging would have helped score the GSP/Hendricks fight
"When you have a fight like Johny Hendricks against Georges St. Pierre, you know the problem with the fight is, is that when Johny Hendricks won a round, he won it in a dominant fashion. When Georges won a round, he barely squeaked by, but they're getting the same score. You're not watching a fight that's even, but now on the judge's scorecards we have two rounds gone by, and it's even on their scorecards, when it hasn't been an even fight. We need to figure out a way to be able to account for the differences in those rounds."
Thoughts on Jason High’s punishment if he thought it was too much
“Absolutely there has to be varying degrees of punishment, but it has to be a punishment that is, you know, it evenly matches the crime, and the crime was pretty minimal.”
"Jason put his hands on Kevin and kinda pushed him away. It was wrong. To be taken out of the UFC - I understand what Dana White is doing and I’m not saying, you know, Dana is, he's slamming his foot down, going don’t do that, you're embarrassing me, you're embarrassing my promotion, you're embarrassing the sport, I can’t have that. Now the question is, if Jon Jones would have done the same thing, would he have kicked Jon Jones out of the UFC? He wouldn’t have. Now I understand why, I’m not saying that he should, but Jason got punished in a harsh fashion. Now on top of, you know Dana removing him from the UFC, the New Mexico State Athletic commission has, you know suspended him for 1 year. That’s one year of time that he cannot make a living fighting. That's a lot. You know, you're having people take away your ability to make a living, based on one act”
"Sometimes we as human beings, we do things off of emotion that we normally wouldn't do."
“Do I think he should have been punished? Yes. He should have had his hand slapped, he should have gotten, you know a five month suspension, he should have been fined, we'll say twenty-five hundred, five thousand dollars. That’s gonna hurt him, he's gonna feel it, but I think that overall Jason got treated very harshly for what happened.”
On Jon Jones and his Eye Pokes
“You’ll get fans saying, you know 'why are you not doing anything about that?' Well the reason that any referee is not doing anything, (is) there's no rule against what he's doing. As a matter of (fact), there's no rule that says a fight cannot have an open hand that’s extended towards their opponent. Now I’m not telling you (that) I like it. I don't like it and I think it needs to be changed"
“There’s nothing that we can do with the open hand. I can’t tell someone like Jon 'hey close your hand' when it comes out, and I'm gonna tell him, what I’m doing is, I‘m setting up the possibility of me taking a point off of his score card if that eye poke occurs. You know, because that’s when we do something. When the fingers goes in the eye there is a rule, no eye gouging. We can do something about that foul at that time. Now, most of the time it's done in a defence action, meaning Jon is backing up, he's got his hand extended, and (due to) the offensive actions of his opponent coming forward his finger goes in their eye.”
“Until they chance the rules and say 'you are not allowed to extend your hand in an open fashion, in any offensive situation', now if they put that rule in and Jon does it, we as a referee can say 'Jon close your hand now, and I’m warning you if you don't, if you put it out in the same fashion I'm gonna start taking points”
I he could change one rule in MMA, what it be
"Downward pointed elbow strikes. Get rid of it, it's useless"
Craziest fan experience
"The funny ones are when you're at a show or something and, you'll get some good looking girls and they'll want an autograph, and they'll want it on a certain part of their body, and sometimes that's a good thing because you gotta hold on to that part to sign it for quite a while."
[YT]mgYL999e2So[/YT]
Some of the Topics Covered
-Almost fighting at UFC 1
-His injury at UFC on Fox Werdum vs Browne
-The Ross Pearson/Diego Sanchez fight and Decision
-Using Diego Sanchez fights to teach Judges scoring criteria
-How to improve judging
-What the exact process to become a judge is
-If fighters would make good judges
-How the GSP Hendricks fight should have been scored
-How improved scoring would lead to scoring fights like Woodley vs Macdonald
-The Jason High Incident, and if the punishment was fair
-Teaching Refs to handle their emotions when fighters become aggressive
-TRT and the way the commission handled it's ban
-Why he wasn't in EA Sports UFC
-Craziest Fan experiences
-If the commission takes Ref's sizes into account depending on the fighter size
-Knees to a downed opponent
also answered some Sherdog Fan Questions from this thread:
http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/f2/give-us-your-questions-big-john-mccarthy-2765869/
Some Quotes
Thoughts on Judges decision on the Sanchez vs. Pearson fight
“It happens. Judges can get sucked in by antics, they can get sucked in by someone’s persona and the way that they go about acting like something doesn’t hurt.”
"It's not so much that you have to land the most. A lot of times we get these punch stats where it'll say 'well this fighter landed more punches', that doesn't matter."
“It’s the punches that land and what power and effect is on them, is what we look at as a judge. And honestly, in that fight in my opinion, it wasn’t a good decision. I thought Marcos Rosales - who is someone that I work with a lot here in California - I thought that he had the right score. I thought that Ross Pearson won every round. I didn’t think it was that hard of a fight to score, but unfortunately those things happen. I think the UFC took care of it the proper way, you know, gave Ross Pearson his win bonus."
"At the time, Diego think he won the fight, because he's fighting hard, and he doesn't know everything that's going on in the fashion that someone who's watching it does, but if you go back and watch the fight, Ross Pearson did what he was supposed to do. He won the fight."
What can be done to improve the judging outcomes in MMA
“Well, I honestly believe that the judging criteria itself needs to change. The criteria that we use, what's established under the unified rules is the criteria for the judges, is something that I wrote with with Jeff Blatnick back in 1998, 99, and it’s antiquated, it’s wrong, you know. It was at a time when this sport was young and had a lot of political pressure against it.”
"The other thing that needs to change is, we have way, way too much variance between a 10-9 and a 10-8 round. That needs to change. We need to make a 10-9 round what it should be, a very close round.”
“A 10-9 is an extremely close round. Great, let's keep it that way. But a 10-8 round needs to be the round where it's easy to say fighter "A" beat fighter "B" in this round. No problem, give them 10-8, and then when we start talking about guys that are doing big damage and domination in the fight, like we get some 10-8’s now, that’s now a 10-7 round, because that’s going to open up the scoring and make it more appropriate.”
How improving judging would have helped score the GSP/Hendricks fight
"When you have a fight like Johny Hendricks against Georges St. Pierre, you know the problem with the fight is, is that when Johny Hendricks won a round, he won it in a dominant fashion. When Georges won a round, he barely squeaked by, but they're getting the same score. You're not watching a fight that's even, but now on the judge's scorecards we have two rounds gone by, and it's even on their scorecards, when it hasn't been an even fight. We need to figure out a way to be able to account for the differences in those rounds."
Thoughts on Jason High’s punishment if he thought it was too much
“Absolutely there has to be varying degrees of punishment, but it has to be a punishment that is, you know, it evenly matches the crime, and the crime was pretty minimal.”
"Jason put his hands on Kevin and kinda pushed him away. It was wrong. To be taken out of the UFC - I understand what Dana White is doing and I’m not saying, you know, Dana is, he's slamming his foot down, going don’t do that, you're embarrassing me, you're embarrassing my promotion, you're embarrassing the sport, I can’t have that. Now the question is, if Jon Jones would have done the same thing, would he have kicked Jon Jones out of the UFC? He wouldn’t have. Now I understand why, I’m not saying that he should, but Jason got punished in a harsh fashion. Now on top of, you know Dana removing him from the UFC, the New Mexico State Athletic commission has, you know suspended him for 1 year. That’s one year of time that he cannot make a living fighting. That's a lot. You know, you're having people take away your ability to make a living, based on one act”
"Sometimes we as human beings, we do things off of emotion that we normally wouldn't do."
“Do I think he should have been punished? Yes. He should have had his hand slapped, he should have gotten, you know a five month suspension, he should have been fined, we'll say twenty-five hundred, five thousand dollars. That’s gonna hurt him, he's gonna feel it, but I think that overall Jason got treated very harshly for what happened.”
On Jon Jones and his Eye Pokes
“You’ll get fans saying, you know 'why are you not doing anything about that?' Well the reason that any referee is not doing anything, (is) there's no rule against what he's doing. As a matter of (fact), there's no rule that says a fight cannot have an open hand that’s extended towards their opponent. Now I’m not telling you (that) I like it. I don't like it and I think it needs to be changed"
“There’s nothing that we can do with the open hand. I can’t tell someone like Jon 'hey close your hand' when it comes out, and I'm gonna tell him, what I’m doing is, I‘m setting up the possibility of me taking a point off of his score card if that eye poke occurs. You know, because that’s when we do something. When the fingers goes in the eye there is a rule, no eye gouging. We can do something about that foul at that time. Now, most of the time it's done in a defence action, meaning Jon is backing up, he's got his hand extended, and (due to) the offensive actions of his opponent coming forward his finger goes in their eye.”
“Until they chance the rules and say 'you are not allowed to extend your hand in an open fashion, in any offensive situation', now if they put that rule in and Jon does it, we as a referee can say 'Jon close your hand now, and I’m warning you if you don't, if you put it out in the same fashion I'm gonna start taking points”
I he could change one rule in MMA, what it be
"Downward pointed elbow strikes. Get rid of it, it's useless"
Craziest fan experience
"The funny ones are when you're at a show or something and, you'll get some good looking girls and they'll want an autograph, and they'll want it on a certain part of their body, and sometimes that's a good thing because you gotta hold on to that part to sign it for quite a while."
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