Don't Blame The Judges. MMA Doesn't Have A Real Scoring System.

[Doctor Lenovo]

The rounds are scored. However, what the fighters are doing to win the round is not really objectively scored. Basically, the judges watch the fight and decide who they believe looks like it's winning the fight, and they give that fighter the round. It is mostly based on subjectivity.

Meaning, there are no points for strikes to the limbs, strikes to the body, strikes to the head, clinch against the fence, TD, must be defended submission attempt, back-take and etc.

It is all based on the judges' subjective experience and feelings of who looks like the winner of each round. This is a huge problem that needs to be corrected.

What the fighters are doing to win the round must be scored objectively and not with subjective language like effective striking and significant strikes.

 

[SmoothPies]

I agree TS - it's much easier to tell who won a boxing fight than a MMA fight.

Sure - there are some decisions that are flat out embarrassing, but fights like Jones vs. Reyes are close fights, period. Just look at this forum after with how many people disagree with what happened.

I don't really know how you correct it. You can assign points to things like you mention above - but at the end of the day, how do you really rate a takedown vs. a punch to the face? They are completely different actions and who can really say one is more significant?

 

[Doug Money]

Agree. But retired fighters as judges as some have suggested isnt the way to go either. There would be bias , plus, i think fighters arent the best at putting aside their emotions when watching peers compete.

 

[Law Dog]

Agree. But retired fighters as judges as some have suggested isnt the way to go either. There would be bias , plus, i think fighters arent the best at putting aside their emotions when watching peers compete.

Just to hard to trust some retired fighters. They’re likely gonna be biased and any bad blood will result in latent corruption. It’s a tough nut to crack when it comes to a legit scoring system. All the more reason to make the first round 10min.

 

[San Griente]

They don’t even use a 10-pt must system; they just pretend to.

If they actually used it, there would be constant draws, such as:

10-9; 10-9; 8-10

or similar.

 

[tdluxon]

It is a really weird scoring system. Octagon control... what does that even mean? So just chasing someone around or standing in the middle is enough to win, even if you are eating punches?

 

[Doctor Lenovo]

Agree. But retired fighters as judges as some have suggested isnt the way to go either. There would be bias , plus, i think fighters arent the best at putting aside their emotions when watching peers compete.

I agree 100%. Fighters should NOT be judges. The problem with current judges is the subjective bias, and making fighters judges will not fix this problem. In fact, I predict it will make the problem worse. Fighters have close relationships with other fighters. It would be almost impossible to find a fighter judge we can trust to have the least amount of personal bias.

All one has to do is watch all the "MMA pros pick fights" videos on YouTube to realize why fighters judges will not fix the subjective bias in MMA scoring. LOL

 

[Rod Farva]

Octagon control is the dumbest thing ever.

they weigh a takedown so heavily. If octagon control isn’t so important, then every time a guy sprawls and thwarts a takedown, the round should skew in his favor as well and count just as much as a takedown.

if you take a guy down, you control where the fight takes place just as much as if you stop a takedown

 

[Crom Cruach]

I've said it before judges should tally the strikes, grappling etc on buttons and they can easily use a sensor in the fighters kit to generate a heat map of movement.

Then let a computer weight it correctly and give a score.

It's not a difficult as it seems.
ONe guy looks at punches, one guy looks at kicks, and one guy looks at grappling / sub attempts.

They are doing it anyway to give the stats.