In most sports, you know the score. However, imagine a football game if no one knew the score, and instead, some people who most of them never played in a football game in their life were making a determination as to who was playing better football. It would make for a weird game.
Judging is a problem in MMA, sometimes a massive problem. One potential improvement is Open Scoring – judge’s scores are announced after each round.
Adam Roorbach, executive director of the Kansas Athletic Commission, is testing it for MMA, via giving promoters the option to try it; Invicta FC has been.
“This is not to fix bad judging,” explained Roorbach in March of 2020. “This is not for anything [like that]. At least you know the score. In my opinion, and in our commission’s opinion, fighters, you guys literally have your careers and lives on the line here. You deserve to know the score.”
There are also multiple potential downsides to Open Scoring. Judges may get booed by the crowd when their score is announced influencing them in subsequent rounds. Judges may be influenced by the other judges’ scores. And fighters may not elect to fight on in the case of an accidental foul if they know they are ahead.
UFC president Dana White recently participates in an online chat with ESPN+ subscribers hosted by Laura Sanko, and offered another downside. White argued that announcing the winner after a close fight, especially a title fight, is among the most dramatic moments in sports, and that with Open Scoring we’d already know, might have known since after the third round, which would be maybe 15 minutes before.
When we do the fights, I have an idea of who I think won or lost or whatever, but when I’m standing there with the belt, I don’t know what Bruce Buffer is going to say, said White, as transcribed by MMA Junkie. He doesn’t tell me anything. The judges tell him, the commission do their thing, they tell him, and I’m standing there waiting to hear too, so I’m just as blown away as the fans are. And I agree with you: It completely takes away the anticipation of who won the fight.
If a guy knows that he’s up two rounds and you’re a professional fighter, you can absolutely stay away from a guy for an entire round and make the fight completely horrible. If you already know you’ve got two rounds in the bag, guarantee if you saw your score up there, all [you] have to do is stay away from this guy for the next five minutes. That makes for a lot of bad third rounds.
It’s never going to be perfect. There are always going to be fights that absolutely drive you insane and piss you off, blow your bets, there will always be all these other things that go with the fight business. At the end of the day, watching the fight and waiting for the results are fun.
What’s your reaction UG?
