In this edition of “The Final Bell” I want to discuss something slightly different than just a fight preview for a few reasons. One, the UFC is on an off week this week as well as Bellator and PFL, and I think its good to reflect on the sport with a huge card coming up on June 11th.
The UFC has been in the MMA fight game for over two decades with its first show starting in 1993, and it was billed as “No Holds Barred”. The sport which some including former senator John McCain called “Human Cockfighting” has come a long way and has been legalized throughout the US and has finally been taken seriously as a sport.
The sport of Mixed Martial Arts is at its peak right now in terms of athletes and competitive bouts, as well as how the athletes train for these fights. The UFC has founded several performance institutes to help train up and coming fighters and you cant go very far in most states without finding some sort of MMA gym.
Although the growth of the sport is great there is always room for improvement in whatever sport is happening and especially transferring from the old school to the new school. The unification and acceptance of MMA came from a lot of hard work of the UFC in the early 2000’s with former referee and now Bellator commentator “Big” John McCarthy helping to create the standards and regulations. However, in the past few years “New” unified rules have been introduced where some states have not accepted that fact and so the sport is no longer completely unified.
In Pride FC kicks to a downed opponent’s head were legal
Image: From BleacherReport
The controversy with the new rules centers mostly around what is considered a “downed” opponent. Unlike in Pride FC and some other opponents the unified rules clearly state you cannot kick or knee a downed opponent in the head. The old rules made it apparent that just a pinky touching the canvas would be enough to consider an opponent to be downed. However, the new unified rules are that the palms have to be on the canvas or the knees and for a fighter to be in sort of a 4-point stance in order to avoid shots to the head with the leg.
This is a glaring issue and the state athletic commissions need to come to some sort of consensus as to a “downed” opponent.
There are a few other things I would like point out as well starting with:
Judging Rounds more than just 10-9
The fans of MMA know that most rounds where there is a slight advantage for the fighter being more dominant with the striking/grappling game, aggression, and octagon control is going to get a 10 point round and the loser will get 9. However, the boxing 10 point must system has to be altered slightly in MMA as we rarely see 10-8, and a 10-7 is almost unheard of. I think if a fighter is close to being finished in a round and is just taking shots without throwing much back in the direction of his opponent the judges need to score is 10-7, or if it really is not close throw a 10-6 out there. Another piece of argument that has been going around the MMA community is announcing the scorecards after each round to either the fighter’s coach or the fighter themselves as well as the fans at home. One of the biggest oppositions to this has been Dana White and he has stated that he feels is would make fighters who were up 2-0 turn off the gas and not engage during that third round. This however goes into another issue of referees then needing to more strictly involve point deductions for passivity and not engaging.
The Inconsistencies With Fouls in MMA
I fully understand the referee in an MMA contest has probably the hardest job out of everyone in that cage. He needs to be glued to every bit of the actions to avoid injury to the fighters but also watching for fouls as well as paying attention to the time to avoid late shots after the bell as well.
Watching any UFC card from the prelims to the main card you are pretty much guaranteed to see a groin strike, or an eye poke. There are several fighters that have even been known to do this an example being Jon Jones constantly poking people in the eye without many repercussions. The problem is the first occurrence a referee normally just warns the fighter and on a second infraction threatens to take a point away if it happens again. The referees need to actively use their power to deduct points as so many MMA fights are so closely contested that accurately calling the fouls could result in legitimate wins being switched around.
I don’t think every foul needs to be a point deduction but there needs to be more consistency across the sport.
3. Use former fighters as the judges for better scoring
I feel this is another aspect of the sport that has been called for a while now as many fighters have asked for former fighters to be the ones deciding the bouts as they actually understand how the entire fight works. The problem with the current judges and it has been for a long time. The judges are normally chosen by the state athletic commission and are normally individuals from the boxing world who do not have a lot of experience in MMA and how the ground game works. There have been several examples of close fights being decided in what the MMA community as a whole deemed should have went the other way. One of the largest bad decisions was George St.Pierre’s decision victory over Hendricks.
There have been others throughout the course of the promotion but the problem really does lie within the judges not knowing exactly what is happening because they are not all aware with the entirety of the fight game and all the pieces of it. Replacing the Boxing Commission judges with MMA fighters instead of just throwing the former fighters into the commentary booth would be great for the sport as a whole.
This however comes down to the commissions themselves and unfortunately this is another problem as the commissions are not truly regulated either and so their decisions on certain aspects of the fight game become final. This relates to things just as failed drug tests and fighter suspensions and there is no consistency between different state’s governing bodies. These bodies need to be regulated or unified in some way so that punishments are equal across all forms of MMA, which would lead to less issues and someone such as Tom Lawlor getting a 2 year suspensions for the same substance as Jon Jones who got no sanctions.
Although the sport of MMA has made massive improvements since its early beginnings there is always room for improvement and these few fixes would be benificial to the fight game.