Hunt vs. Miocic ref, judge, and doctor need further training

Refereeing is the single most thankless task in mixed martial arts. No winning fighter or fan of a winning fighter every thought it was due to the ref, but through some mysterious math, a significant percentage of losers do. However, referee John Sharp in the Stipe Mocic vs. Mark Hunt has been widely and fairly criticized by all sectors of the MMA community for not stopping the fight earlier.

Less remarked upon but even more egregiously in error was judge Anthony Dimitriou.

At one point in the fight, former Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler tweeted an only slightly tongue on cheek message.

“The first 10-5 round in MMA history,” he wrote.

However, when the score cards were released, judge Dimitriou scored every round 10-9.

Referee Barry Foley score a single round 10-8, while Charlie Keech scored a more reasonable two rounds 10-8. Both Foley and Keech scored Round 3 10-8; it was in fact so one sided it resembled a beating not a fight.

MMADecisions only records Dimitriou as having recognized a single 10-8 round, and that was for a point deduction at the direction of the referee.

While there is a degree of subjectivity in judging, the Unified Rules are clear.

The following objective scoring criteria shall be utilized by the judges when scoring a round:

•A round is to be scored as a 10-7 round when a contestant totally dominates by striking or grappling in a round.

If you asked a drunken pine cone with vision issues to watch Round 3, and then asked it whether “close margin” or “overwhelmingly dominates” more accurately characterized the round, then the blind, drunk, piece of wood would have been able to score the round correctly.

While the right fighter won, if Dimitriou’s error led to the wrong fighter winning, it would have been a disaster. The beating that Hunt suffered cannot be undone. Saturday night was a screaming example that further officials training is needed for officials in mixed martial arts.

Ben Fowlkes writing for MMAjunkie, who argued that the ringside doctor, too, did not meet his responsibilities.

Hunt’s great and terrible gift in those situations is the ability to do just enough to ward off the stoppage. He might be doing nothing more than lying on his back, sucking air and eating leather, but tell him to improve his position, and he’ll move just enough to show signs of life. Tell him to fight back, and he’ll toss out a blind backfist. Warn him that you’re going to stop it, and he’ll shift himself from one bad position to another, altering nothing but at least providing the illusion that the fight has entered a different state, one that we must let develop of its own accord.

So why did it take five rounds to finally stop this thing? The answer probably has something to do with the weird culture of MMA, which prefers a sad, dangerous brand of closure to even the vaguest hint of doubt. We don’t throw towels or quit on stools in this sport. At least, not as much as we should.

Instead, we prefer these illusions of safety. The ref demanding a slight change in position in order to allow the face-punching to continue. The doctor asking, honestly, whether a fighter can see.

It’s as if we fear the awful finality of the stoppage so much that we look for any way around it. Then we get someone like Hunt, who’s so tough and so stubborn that he actually laughed when the doctor asked him if he was willing and able to continue against a dangerous opponent, and it’s hard not to feel like it’s only a matter of time before we mess around and let something terrible happen.

It’s not a sin to stop a fight. We didn’t get anything out of those last two rounds except maybe a little extra depression hangover for the morning after. Hunt didn’t get anything out of them except about 30 extra blows to the head, none of which he needed in order to prove his tough-guy credentials to anyone who’s ever seen him fight.

There was no good reason to let that one-sided fight continue. It continued because the people responsible for stopping it apparently felt that they hadn’t been given enough explicitly good reasons to do so.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. We should know by now that you can’t trust a fighter to tell you when he’s had enough. Not even if you ask him directly. Not even if you implore him to be honest with you. Sometimes what the fighter needs is for us to be honest with him. He might not like it, but he’ll get over it. You can’t always say the same thing about the consequences of screwing up in the other direction.

Fighters work at their craft every day. Promoters work at getting asses in seats every day. Some equivalent has to be developed for referees, judges, and even cageside physicians.

Image via and thanks to Zombie Prophet.