Review of Judging system

Once again the Nam Phan fight calls in to question MMA judging. As a fan of both fighters I feel i can be neutral on this. And though I think Nam took the W if all three judges had turned over 29-28 cards for Leonard, the win would be less controversial.

We can ask for minor adjustments to the scoring system, but with such clear discrepancies between judges calling the same fights a greater problem exists.

Fans in the forums call out Dana for either bribing the judges or to do something about it their failures. DW has repeatedly said he can do nothing. And if he could call for firings or changes, then there would be conflict of interest.

We can research widely agreed upon bad calls, getting to the bottom of who the bad judges are. With a website or blog that publishes and tracks these results, we can begin to get to the root of the problem. A compilation of research, and petitions calling for bad judges to be let go could be a powerful force. If there are any fans with the web skills and time to moderate and research, I'd gladly team up with them to push forward an effort for further legitimizing the sport of MMA.


what needs to be done.

Research in to Bad calls.
Fighters and Date of the fight.
Who the Judges where – Articles from blogs, fan comments and descripton of crowd reactions, also opinions of the fighters when available.

Research in to the Selection process, pay, perfomance reviews, and safe guards that currently exist for Judges.

Targeting of judges who repeatedly call fights against, other judges and public sentiment. Also identification of judges who favor a particular style or appear to deviate consistently from the current scoring system.

Review of current scoring sytem based on the unified rules of combat.

Suggestions for rule changes that can be widely agreed upon.

A website, blog or wiki that can track and moderate the research and call for fan support of it’s findings.

Compile packets of the above information and petitions of support from the MMA community calling for action.

Permission from Dana White, Scott Coker and Bjorn Rebney to use broadcast archives for this purpose.