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Talking Heads: Should Cecil Peoples be allowed to judge MMA main events?
By Zach Arnold | June 29, 2010
Our transcript starts at the 4 minute mark…
STEVE COFIELD: “My other issue and I know it was a while ago now, it was October… I’m not comfortable with Cecil Peoples on these fights, especially after he ranted publicly I think there’s an issue and one of the first things I thought of and I actually I didn’t disagree with the draw that much, I thought Shalorus’ leg kicks were pretty vicious but who’s to say now that Cecil Peoples goes to some fights after getting blasted for his ‘leg kicks don’t hurt’ comment and now goes, you know what, screw it, I’m going to score leg kicks to the nth degree?”
KEVIN IOLE: “Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s tough when the officials are talking publicly. I mean, you know, we’re in a world now of media where there’s much more access than there ever was. There’s much more immediacy than there ever was, so everybody can make their case publicly and you know sometimes when the officials talk, it creates you know you want to avoid impropriety and you also want to avoid the appearance of impropriety and by saying, well, leg kicks don’t count, you know hey, if he wants to think that, I disagree with that. I think they should count. I think it’s in the rules. Those are strikes, they should be counted. But if he wants to think that he needs to keep that opinion to himself. His judging criteria needs to kept to himself and then he would have to answer to the commission when they discuss with him after a particular fight how come you didn’t give you know score these points and he can you know make that argument but I think that’s one of the things. But we want to have access to the officials so they can explain because when you heard Herb Dean’s explanation of the point for Jardine being taken off of him, it made a lot more sense than just watching it live.”
STEVE COFIELD: “But we want to have access to them. No, what I’m saying, they don’t need access to the fans. To me that is outrageous. The judge from Southern California (Doug Crosby) who judged Penn and Edgar is going online on The Underground Forum and talking about ghouls at his door wearing RVCA t-shirts from Hilo. I mean, to me, that’s it, you’re done! I can’t trust you in terms of impartiality. I have a question in every fight you’re in.”
KEVIN IOLE: “Yeah. I didn’t read his comments. I remember you discussing the incident and you know that’s wrong. I mean, you know, you have to avoid those kinds of things. You know… as journalists we even have certain things that we have to avoid, you know, hey I’m a columnist so it’s my job to state my opinion so I’m allowed to say, hey, I think that so and so is going to win or I think so and so is terrible or so and so is great, that’s my job as a columnist to express those opinions. I should be able to back them up. A judge is not and I don’t think it’s right for a judge to go out and say that. I think, you know, if they make them available to the media, you know, I think that they should train them to say, hey, you know, answer a specific question and talk about why you scored a fight a certain way. But don’t go out there talking about you know Hawaiian dances and all these other things that you know maybe they said.”
STEVE COFIELD: “I just, you know, and I know there are some over-the-top officials in some of the other sports. I think those sports come pretty down hard on officials who speak too much publicly and they’ve got a little issue right now with a couple of guys. I’m not saying Cecil Peoples never gets to work a fight again but I was a little shocked even though it’s been like 9 months that he was working a main event.”
KEVIN IOLE: “Yeah. I mean, frankly, I was, too, I mean, and I don’t have his record in front of me, Steve, but my recollection in just saying that the fights that he’s missed a lot of fights where other judges have had it differently where the fans, the media. Now, I don’t want to call somebody a bad judge just because I disagree with them or because the majority of the fans disagree with him. Because here’s something I think is important to consider: You know, as fans watching fights, the fans are drinking, they’re eating, they’re high-fiving each other, they’re getting excited and you have to have 100% concentration and I know sometimes you know I’m sitting there at ringside and my pen falls like, let me pick up my pen, and a big punch lands. I can’t evaluate it if the crowd goes crazy, did the punch land, what happened, just my pen falling off the desk. So it’s very tough and so while we all have opinions you know the judge has that 100% concentration so just because I disagree with a judge doesn’t mean that the judge is a bad judge. You know maybe I’m wrong, maybe the fans who’s disagreeing with him is wrong but I think we’re egging on this you know when it seems like they’re being pro-active on things and when they’re going off the way you know some of these situations you’re describing I think that’s where somebody has to draw the line.”
STEVE COFIELD: “And from watching all the fights and you’ve watched more than me but I’ve watched a lot in boxing and covered a lot in boxing and MMA, I usually don’t go nuts on decisions and I actually like I just said I agreed Cecil Peoples’ score, most disagree with the both of us but again that image of lack of objectivity, impartiality in question, that’s when it crosses the line because and it’s bad for the sport because now it’s turned into this whole thing where people feel like the judges are incompetent and they’re overreacting to a very subjective process.”
KEVIN IOLE: “Exactly. And here’s the thing, you know, some people don’t understand how the scoring process works and so there’s people that say, we saw it on [6/19 with Jardine vs. Hamill], oh how can that be a split decision you know it had to be a unanimous decision or they’ll say how can it be a unanimous decision, it was a close fight and it had to be a split decision. Well, you know let’s use boxing because it’s the better example. When you have 12 rounds, if one person wins just by that much, just a little bit every single round, he might win the fight 12 rounds to 0, 120-108 but it’s an extremely close fight. That doesn’t mean the judge thought it was a blowout, that meant that he thought by 50.1% to 49.9% that Fighter A beat Fighter B in every single round. So, you know, the score of a given round isn’t a barometer to tell how the judge scored the fight.”
Topics: Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
This post must make Jordan Breen a sad panda, he keeps complaining (rightly so) that all bad judging is pond off on Cecil Peoples (he’s not a good judge) when there are far worse cases of bad officiating. Why aren’t people talking about Cameron Quwek who gave a score card of 29-27 for Shalorus (An unjustifiable card)?
Mike Fridley on Sherdog’s Play-by-Play also scored a 28-28 Draw which like Peoples card is wrong but not crazy like Quwek’s card.
Fair enough, but who the fuck is Quwek? That’s probably the first and last time we’ll hear from him until something comes back to Edmonton or wherever that card was.
What’s crazy is someone thought that Cecil was such an expert that they paid for his flight and accommodations up there.
(who the fuck is Quwek?) That’s the point though, people don’t talk about all the other crappy judges and so no one knows who they are.
If every crappy judge got called out by name we could really get a good picture of who’s doing there job and who’s bungling it up.
What would be really interesting is if somebody kept a public record of all the officiating scores out there. I mean, you could look at all 3 judges scores of every fight. You could start to see a pattern of (bad) judging.