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BruceLeeOnTRT
Guest
That's the way college football has been run forever, except when they went to an obscure system no one really understood which used complex calculations to always choose the teams with the highest TV ratings. Now they use polling and a committee to decide who gets to the championship playoffs.
I am not defending the current UFC system. I loathe the idea of Cain getting a shot before Arlovski. I think a better defined system might be a big improvement.
However, having a well-defined championship system is not at all fundamental to the definition of a sport.
To be honest, as bad as I think Zuffa is sometimes, they are angels compared to NCAA. Those guys take advantage of young athletes like no other league.
But yes I agree to an extent, match making system alone doesn't make a sport illegitimate. The actual rules and enforcement of them is important too, especially if it's a sport that involves judging. However I think mma fails at this point too.
In hockey, you may not have every penalty called on you, but they will get called. In mma, a guy like jones can poke eyes and never get a penalty because he is needle mover. Just warnings. A guy like palhares can gouge eyes and not get a penalty.
And then there is the judging criteria. It's archaic and has not changed at all. We're still using a system from another sport that doesn't fit mma at all.
This is where I have trouble with it. Mma fighters however are as legit athletes as they come.