The UFC could not escape more scoring controversies at UFC 77, and may have made matters significanly worse.
For those who haven’t heard and/or seen the opening fight of the night between Matt Grice and Jason Black (I haven’t seen it myself), the fight ended in only the worst of possible scenarios.Grice apparently dominated the fight and when the judges scorecards were read the fight was declared a draw with one judge giving the fight to Grice, another giving the fight to Black and the third calling it even.
Gregg Doyle from CBSSportsline.com has a rather scathing and well-written article today about the current state of judging in the UFC events. You should read the full article when you have time but I’ll post some snippets here.
I’m going to put this to potty-mouthed UFC president Dana White in terms he can understand: Your sport has a major f—ing problem.
It’s the scoring. At best it’s a joke. At worst it’s corrupt. Those are the choices, and they are the only choices, as we were reminded again Saturday at UFC 77: Hostile Territory.
Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about. The latest outrage — the latest absolute joke — happened before the UFC 77 card went live on pay-per-view television. It was the first fight, between lightweights Matt Grice and Jason Black, and Grice dominated. He destroyed Black for most of 15 minutes, winning the first and third rounds and controlling most of the second until Black mounted his only offensive late in the round. At worst, Grice won two rounds to one, which on the UFC’s 10-point scoring system would be a 29-28 decision. And an argument could be made that it was 30-27.
The fight was announced as a draw. One judge had Grice winning. One had Black winning. The third had it even.
The crowd went nuts. Grice was stunned. Black was embarrassed. The crowd booed for more than a minute, even as UFC announcer Joe Rogan was interviewing Grice over the public-address system (and saying he thought Grice had won). Grice was in the middle of explaining his shock when the frazzled director of the Ohio Athletic Commission, Bernie Profato, lumbered into the octagon and whispered something into Rogan’s ear.
This is where a bad situation got ridiculous. Profato was whispering to Rogan that a mistake had been made. Rogan was relaying the information to the crowd. Grice was celebrating. Black was nodding. The crowd was cheering.
Me, I’m steaming.
I love the opening line; absolutely classic and absolutely true. Here are some other interesting tidbits that are actually quite alarming from the judging at UFC 77.
Now there’s the Grice-Black debacle, which wasn’t even the only scoring embarrassment from Saturday night. Here were some others from UFC 77:
• Josh Burkman’s victory against Forrest Petz was announced as a majority decision, then changed to reflect that it was actually a split decision. As an added bonus, all three judges originally thought Petz’s last name was “Perez.” On their cards, “Perez” has been crossed out and replaced by “Petz.”
• Stephan Bonnar beat Eric Schafer by technical knockout, but the official ballot originally listed Schafer as the winner. Somehow that mistake — unlike those involving Grice-Black and Burkman-Petz — was caught before being announced to the crowd.
• Two official ballots listed the wrong referee. Two had a judge wrong. And one judge thought victorious middleweight Yushin Okami’s name was Okami Yushin.
Taken individually, each of those smaller mistakes is a humorous footnote. But taken as a whole? On a night when Matt Grice’s demolition of Jason Black was originally announced as a draw? This isn’t funny.
This is a problem.
It’s a big problem, Dana White. Fix your f—ing sport.
Now, in Dana White’s defense (man, it REALLY pained me to say that), the judges are the UFC’s judges - they are appointed by the state athletic commission. Zuffa doesn’t pay or choose the judges, although I am sure they can request judges just like they can place requests for referees. Still, with the UFC the front-running MMA promotion at the moment, they need to lead the charge to fix this situation. Either better educate the judges or find a new, better way to score fights.
Or at least they could hire some third graders to add up the scores at the end.
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Tags: UFC, MMA, UFC 77, Gregg Doyle
(via MMA HQ - Mixed Martial Arts News and Analysis)