"Effective Striking/Grappling shall be considered the first priority of round assessments. Effective Aggressiveness is a ‘Plan B’ and should not be considered unless the judge does not see ANY advantage in the Effective Striking/Grappling realm. Cage/Ring Control (‘Plan C’) should only be needed when ALL other criteria are 100% even for both competitors. This will be an extremely rare occurrence.
PRIORITIZED CRITERIA:
Effective Striking/Grappling
Legal blows that have immediate or cumulative impact with the potential to contribute towards the end of the match with the IMMEDIATE weighing in more heavily than the cumulative impact. Successful execution of takedowns, submission attempts, reversals and the achievement of advantageous positions that produce immediate or cumulative impact with the potential to contribute to the end of the match, with the IMMEDIATE weighing more heavily than the cumulative impact.” It shall be noted that a successful takedown is not merely a changing of position, but the establishment of an attack from the use of the takedown. Top and bottom position fighters are assessed more on the impactful/effective result of their actions, more so than their position. This criterion will be the deciding factor in a high majority of decisions when scoring a round. The next two criteria must be treated as a backup and used ONLY when Effective Striking/Grappling is 100% equal for the round."
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So they use the word impact when referring to both grappling and striking, and they emphasize that this "impact" is toward ending the match. It pretty clearly seems to be emphasizing that only anything that will contribute to "end" the match counts, and by that I would assume they mean a finish... The only other thing is "ending" the match by winning on the scorecards? That would be silly, so no... Curiously, there's nothing defined in terms of point scoring actions. They seem to disregard it completely
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Well fuck I wrote all that and realized that's a slightly outdated one, and the most recent has this wording
"2. Impact: A judge shall assess if a fighter impacts their opponent significantly in the round, even though they may not have dominated the action.
Impact includes visible evidence such as swelling and lacerations. Impact shall also be assessed when a fighter’s actions, using striking and/or grappling, lead to a diminishing of their opponent’s energy, confidence, abilities and spirit. All of these come as a direct result of impact. When a fighter is impacted by strikes, by lack of control and/or ability, this can create defining moments in the round and shall be assessed with great value.
3. Dominance: As MMA is an offensive based sport, dominance of a round can be seen in striking when the losing fighter is forced to continually defend, with no counters or reaction taken when openings present themselves. Dominance in the grappling phase can be seen by fighter staking dominant positions in the fight and utilizing those positions to attempt fight ending submissions or attacks. Merely holding a dominant position(s) shall not be a primary factor in assessing dominance. What the fighter does with those positions is what must be assessed. In the absence of dominance in
the grappling phase, as set forth in paragraph 3 of the promulgated rules, to be considered dominate, there must be a singularly or in combination, some types of submission attempts, strikes, or an overwhelming pace which is measured by improved or aggressive positional changes that cause the losing fighter to consistently be in a defensive or reactive mode"
So the only thing I don't like about this one is the very end which basically implies you can just keep switching control positions and that's enough because your opponent is constantly reacting to it. Which in a sense means you could win by getting your opponent to constantly be frozen up due to feints. Which I guess has happened once... Like El----
Lol.
Yeah I think that's tenuous but there it is. In the paragraph before they do specifically point out instances of "impact" like lacerations and swelling. So there is that. I bolded it. Props to anyone that read that. Rule document-ese is quite dry, lol
