Grab a seat and a cup of coffee
There’s been a good amount of anger at some decisions of late (Jones vs Reyes, Felder vs Hooker). And after watching this fight (muted). I thought it was the perfect subject to analyse. (Although after some research, Lewis vs NGannou would probably be better).
Why, you ask? Because neither fighter did anything, and so breaking it down is so much easier.
This venture did however take a detour when I realised just how bad the judging criterias are, and MORE IMPORTANTLY how they are actively not followed.
So before we can correctly judge the fight, we have to figure out just what the fuck the rules are:
On November of 2018 the Nevada State Atheletic commision adopted, but did not adopt (wtf) the new Unified Rules of MMA. Further making it the
NOT unified rules of MMA. confused yet? don’t worry, it gets worse. The new unified rules favors damage more than anything, although they don’t really call it that. it has a more classy name such as “effective striking”. But regardless. Nevada adopted most of these rules except the one concerning grounded opponents (yeah, that whole cluster fuck). Let’s have a look at the current Judging Criteria for Nevada (or just skip it if it’s boring):
Did you find a lot of weird stuff? me too! let’s break them down.
Well, that doesn’t sound like damage at all. Effective grappling? and it has the /. So that means effective striking and effective grappling are equal? Only one of those things cause damage. Confusing.
Oh, wait, this is interesting. So takedowns
do matter. You could argue it’s the results from a takedown, but then we’re just back to effective striking (or a submission). It's not what Khabib does WITH his grappling, this scores his grappling as well as his ground and pound. Also, a horrible way of structuring a sentence. “Assessed by the successful executions and impactful results coming from a takedown.” fire this person, please, thank you.
Now this is probably the biggest gripe I have with the entire judging criteria:
If you haven’t watched MMA, you’d read this and start scoring rounds 10-7. Usman and Khabib should have scoreboards full of 10-7. They should be given out nightly. yet 10-7 are MORE rare than 10-10 which the rule books specifically points out as “RARE”.
Now, if we as MMA tourists are confused, imagine what this is doing to the 50-year-old state employee who had one crash course with Big John and got thrown into the limelight.
Here’s my theory. They’re kind of just winging it, aren’t they? I mean a lot of them know what they’re doing, and judging without replays and from one angle is hard. But it’s pretty clear a lot of them are kind of just watching a round going:
“I feel that guy won this round.” and most of the time those two definitions overlap. Because the MMA criteria is pretty close to
“who would you not want to be after that round.” Regardless, and enough rambling. Let’s have a look at the Adesanya vs Romero fight:
ROUND 1
Adesanya 2 Strikes
Romero 4 Strikes
The infamous start. It’s not hard to see what the game plan was: Force the counter-striker to lead. Yoel might be standing still, but Israel is just dancing around him. moving backwards even though the opponent is stationary. SMH.
Okay, Yoel is not helping his case. Israel finally advances, and Yoel Immediately retreats.
This moment right here is the problem of the entire fight boiled down into a 2 second gif:
Yoel feints, to were israel moves back. Then Yoel proceeds to do the slowest spin ever in the history of MMA. Hopefully on purpose to draw Israel in, but Israel doesn't bite. The 42 year old man is GIVING YOU HIS BACK! and you go "naw." At this point the shit show is a fact. Both fighters are to blame for this.
First actual strike. Looks like a decent calf kick.
Leg kick back. didn't connect, but I'll leave it in, because the reaction it got from Israel could fool the judges into thinking it did.
Blocked head kick, but at least we're getting somewhere.
This is the one: Israel finally loses his patience and does exactly what Yoel has been training for. the result is a solid overhand that gets a good reaction from Israel. Better not do that again.
israel goes back to working on the outside. Another leg kick. this one looks a bit more solid.
I feel like this is Yoel trying to win the round. A burst of energy, flashy. It lands while Israel's retreating. A bit of a stumble too.
Inside leg kick. Israel moves away from it, but it still looks scorable.
SCORE ROUND 1
Sal D'Amato -
Yoel Romero - 10-9
Chris Lee -
Yoel Romero - 10-9
Ron McCarthy -
Yoel Romero - 10-9
Me -
Yoel Romero - 10-9
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