Judge Crosby: No way to make money off judge accountability
Douglas Crosby:” But there’s no system in place to do that, and I don’t know if one is ever going to exist. If there’s no way to make money at it, no one is going to do it.”
Longtime MMA judge Douglas Crosby appeared recently on Chael Sonnen’s You’re Welcome! podcast and was pressed on a number of issues.
Sonnen asked Crosby about what formal training judges receive to officiate at the highest levels. He was grandfathered in as he has judged UFCs since 2000, has judged 200 major fights, and has judged in 16 courts states and eight countries.
There are various training programs; I kind of got into this before all that, said Crosby as transcribed by Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie. Back then we kind of had to make it up as we go along. I had an archival portfolio of knowledge concerning martial arts, and I had an ability to be critical and appreciate and understand what I was seeing. Those were the things that were most important as far as judging is concerned.
Virtually ever judge has turned in controversial scores in the past, including Crosby. There have been calls for judges to explain their reasoning, but Crosby did not agree given the existing process.
Do I think judges should be accountable? Yeah. Of course, he said. But in every other instance, judges are not only accountable by name, but they also give opinions on why they judge things the way they did. It’s those opinions that make the machine move everybody forward. If the judge says, ‘This is what I think and this is why I think it and this is why I made the decision,’ which is what the Supreme Court does and what other court judges do, that allows everyone to analyze and critique that judges’ reasoning. That’s the way to me that everyone moves forward and gets better. But there’s no system in place to do that, and I don’t know if one is ever going to exist.
If there’s no way to make money at it, no one is going to do it. There’s no reason to do it because there’s no way to make money at it. I don’t know if accountability would make people happy to be honest with you. I don’t know if it would give them any greater satisfaction. I think the people who are interested in the sport will be happy with the decision even if they don’t personally agree with it.
“There’s a very small percentage of people that carry around this portfolio of grievances where every decision they don’t agree with is a call to arms and an opportunity to get on the Internet. That’s their right. They’re welcome to do it, but I think the overwhelming majority of people who are interested in MMA watch the fights, enjoy the fights and get on with their lives whether they agree with the decision or not. I don’t know if there’s that much of a call for it. I think if there was that much of a call for it, somebody would have already figured out how to make money at it, and somebody would have monetized it. Nobody has.
Mixed martial arts is literally the blink in the eye on the timeline compared to just about every other sport in existence. I think a lot of the things having to do with the language of how that sport is appreciated are still being formulated now. It’s a little early in any appraisal of MMA to say there are any absolutes yet. There’s too much to evolve and develop as it grows. That’s the same thing with the judging. I think the judging continues to evolve and develop.
Crosby scored the Iaquinta vs. Masvidal fight contrary to the opinion of the other two judges, but in keeping with the opinion of most figures in the media. Iaquinta’s coach Ray Longo appeared on the MMA Hour recently and alleged that Crosby had “inappropriate relationships” with more than one figure associated with the gym, including a woman who, Longo alleges, got a “court order of protection” against Crosby. Longo therefore felt that Crosby was not a suitable figure to judge a Serra/Longo fighter.
Crosby declined to go into a specifics, but said he was not biased.
That answer could be given by the individual who assigned me; I’m not an administrator, said Crosby. If I didn’t think I should have been assigned to it, I wouldn’t have sat down.