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Bad judging continues to plague MMA, causing severe paranoia for everyone

By Zach Arnold | October 1, 2010

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K-1’s two shows this weekend in Seoul, South Korea are being taped in 3D. Dan Herbertson has the details on the two shows coming up here.

I got a chance to watch both the WEC and Bellator events last night. We saw real superstar aces in action (Jose Aldo, Megumi Fujii) and a few intense brawls (Aguilar/Frausto, Cerrone/Varner), but unfortunately once again the main storyline coming out of the events was breathtakingly bad MMA judging. Mark Hominick was the far superior striker in his fight against Leonard Garcia, yet everyone was breathing a huge sigh of relief when Hominick won a split decision. Yes, on one judge’s score card, he lost the fight. However, the worst scoring by far last night was in the Jessica Aguilar/Zoila Frausto fight. Frausto barely made 116 pounds the day before and ended up in a stand-up war where Aguilar simply took it to her. It was a 29-28 fight for either woman. So, naturally we got one judge giving Aguilar a 30-27 score and two judges giving Frausto a 30-27 score. Poor Jessica’s reaction after the announcement of the decision was exactly my reaction and the fans were pissed at the event. It’s a horrible outcome because Frausto ended up getting hated by the fans (ala Sean Sherk at UFC 119) and the deserving person ends up on the losing end of the stick. Megumi Fujii, on the other hand, had no doubts raised in her victory over Lisa Ward. Precise, efficient, brutal, and powerful in technique in about a minute. Frausto’s a better striker and has size, but the odds are definitely against her in the 115 pound women’s tournament finals in Bellator.

I was reading some press clippings in the Denver media about Jose Aldo’s win over Manny Gamburyan and even the non-believers or newbies figured out that they were seeing one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world in Jose Aldo. Josh Gross has Aldo #2 on his P4P list behind Anderson Silva. Aldo is going to run out of opponents here pretty quickly if he can beat Josh Grispi. The only one left would be his training mate, Marlon Sandro, and unfortunately we won’t see that fight.

Melvin Guillard admitted in a newspaper article that the fight he delivered at UFC 119 was not what Dana White was expecting but that it was exactly the methodical game plan that Greg Jackson wanted to see.

UFC UK boss Marshall Zelaznik is reiterating claims that UFC will run several UK-based Fight Night shows in 2011.

Dan Hardy says that training for his upcoming Carlos Condit fight has been easy.

CB Dollaway, Ryan Bader, and Aaron Simpson are ready to open a brand new 25,000 square foot MMA gym that is being financed by Miami Heat sharp-shooter Mike Miller.

Oscar De La Hoya is drawing heat in the boxing business for indicating that a UFC-type model might be needed to help build up the sport.

Just a thought…

Amidst the discussion about Chael Sonnen’s failed drug test in California, the angle that drew the most heat is when Josh Gross suggested that UFC cut fighters who fail tests as the least painful way to send a message. A lot of readers thought that was too extreme of a measure, especially since fighters lose the ability to make sponsorship money if they aren’t fighting. Well, what about this idea — if a fighter fails a drug test, they are suspended for however long it may be and they are also banned for one year from getting a title shot. Would that be a fair or unfair punishment?

Unintelligent defense, a new hybrid MMA/culture blog.

Topics: Bellator, K-1, Media, MMA, South Korea, UFC, UK, WEC, Zach Arnold | 23 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

23 Responses to “Bad judging continues to plague MMA, causing severe paranoia for everyone”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    1) ODLH is 100% correct that boxing would benefit from a UFC type of model. Of course he is the one who wants to lead the campaign, and I see him as the best possible candidate to do so. I see some people saying it would be impossible. I disagree. All that needs to happen is HBO needs to say: “If you are on our station, it must be through only 1 promoter.” That would slowly help fix many of the problems of the sport.

    2) Once a guy serves his suspension, there should be no restrictions. End of story.

    3) I’m not hating on the Hominick/Garcia decision half as much as everybody else. Hominick was SO PASSIVE for the majority of the fight. Yes, he was much more tactical, but he let it become way too close by not throwing his hands enough. Garcia was really the agressor and stole 1 round on my score cards. I didn’t think Garcia won, but I can see how a judge scored it for him. Instead of blaming it on the judges, in this case it needs to be blamed on the fighter for not doing enough of what he was paid to do…. Which is fight. Never once did Hominick go for the finish. Never once did he try and go outside of his comfortable jab and occassional power punch. If you want to coast for 15 minutes, judges are going to se that.

    4) Even Greg Jackson can’t take the excitement out of Garcia & Cerrone. Garcia was doing a little bit of that boring stuff in the first round, but he finally went back to his regular method of fighting. Guillard’s game plan should get fighters warning and points deducted. It’s stalling by circling instead of backing up. And it shouldn’t be tolerated for an entire fight without truly engaging….

    • Kalle says:

      Guillard engaged and then got out of the way before Stephens could hit him. I’ll a display of skill and speed like that over Leonard Garcia’s sloppy haymakers any day.

      Cerrone has the muay thai skills to back up an agressive striking game and I love watching him fight, Garcia is just another middling wrestleboxer.

    • smoogy says:

      If you relate to the judge who scored it for Garcia, you’re part of the problem. How did Hominick lose a round, or how did Garcia win a round? The reasons you presented for penalizing Hominick are specious at best. Fighters who win rounds and fights for “being the agressor” while they wing forward with punches that miss badly are getting gifts from incompetent judges.

      • 45 Huddle says:

        Hominick was without question the superior striker. His strikes were more crisp, accurate, and did more damage.

        And that should win a fighter all 3 rounds.

        Except Hominick did all of this in an extremely passive manner. Never once really going for it. Garcia outworked him the majority of the fight and stole a round from him in my opinion based on that.

        Personally, I scored it 29-28 for Hominick. Hominick should have won it 30-27 if he just pulled the trigger a little more and acted like he actually cared to fight.

        • The Gaijin says:

          “Garcia outworked him the majority of the fight and stole a round from him in my opinion based on that.”

          This is not an attack on you – but I just thoroughly detest a statement like this, be it for boxing or mma…the whole he outworked/was busier thing. This is not part of the judging criteria nor should it be and it should not acknowledged or rewarded positively. I understand we don’t want a bunch of “counter-strikers” waiting for the other guy to throw first, but it accoplishes nothing, shows a complete ineffectiveness on the “outworking” fighter’s part (if all he is doing is outworking and not actually successfully landing) and is entirely subjective and without definition.

        • 45 Huddle says:

          It is part of the judging criteria in MMA. It’s called “aggression.”

          No matter how effective your offense is, you need to have enough of it to win a round.

          It’s very reasonable and makes sense for when things are rather even, to give a round to a fighter who is pushing the action more.

        • The Gaijin says:

          “Aggression” does not outweigh effective striking, effective grappling or effective anything else.

          Giving someone a round based on aggression is proof positive of how retarded judging has become.

        • smoogy says:

          Garcia expended more energy and missed more punches while Hominick conservatively landed his shots. And somehow, in your personal judging criteria, this means Garcia was winning?

    • edub says:

      Anybody who scores that fight for Garcia needs to watch it 5 times over, just so they can see how dumb they are in thinking he even won one round. Hominick completely picked him apart after the first round, and IMO still won that one

  2. Oscar wanting to run boxing has nothing to do with helping boxing and everything to do with enriching himself. He’s setting up an empire that has from day one intended to do exactly that, and in response to what the fans want, he’s given them some truly lousy fight cards not deserving of HBO with the dates and huge money he’s been given. Its an embarrassment for that network and they’re running full bore to Bob Arum to try and give them big fights.

    Its just a ploy. The sport is too big and too international to fit under a single banner. Most boxing fans I’ve talked to are mortified at the prospect of Oscar shutting guys out because they don’t want to kow-tow to his contract demands.

    If the UFC wants to reward people who use steroids they will. Its up to the media to criticize it and hopefully turn public opinion against fights like that should it feel it is a worthy goal.

    Garcia and the Zombie aren’t any good. That’s what I said after the OMG INCREDIBLE FIGHT! of dudes throwing haymakers wildly, and them fighting journeymen and TUF rejects only drives the point home. Of course I think I saw posts last night elsewhere about the up and coming Mark Hominick that made me legit LOL.

    • 45 Huddle says:

      HBO and Golden Boy could start with dominating the American boxing landscape. And they penetrate each market slowly from there. It could be done, but it would take a serious 15 year business plan, true devotion from HBO, and true scouts at the lowest levels to pick up key boxers before they latch on within their home country.

      If somebody asked a MMA fan after UFC 31 if Zuffa would be where they are today, they would have said no. Sure, boxing is more established, but industries can always be transformed over the long haul.

      I just don’t think the guys running it will put that much time and money into such a tough project.

      • They could do a lot of things. What Golden Boy has done is what a lot of promoters do – talk a huge game, offer junk. And then, often there are worse decisions on GBP cards than other promotions. And that’s consistent. So do I trust them to do “what is right”? No. If the sport as it was set up right now gave into their demands in the US, I would expect that the clarity in divisions would be gravely damaged, because there would be no reasonable chance of unification in many weight classes. Not only that, in terms of product to the end user, I would expect lousier HBO and Showtime cards. That isn’t an improvement.

        • Robert Poole says:

          This is a pretty solid point.

          GBP is notorious for setting up absolutely atrocious undercards. TR is not much better but lately there’s been at least a couple of decent undercard fights to go with the main event on their show.

          I remember watching Pacquaio-DLH and getting less than 10 total rounds of action out of the 4 aired fights because the three undercard fights were complete mismatches. And because those fights ended so early I had to wait literally an hour between fights and watch the same video packages I had seen aired in the pre-show over and over.

          Every fight card needs to have two main event caliber fights, two solid mid-level fights and a few exciting prospect fights in the prelims that can be aired later if there happens to be early ends to other fights on the main show.

          And actually I think I saw this on the Mosely-Mora PPV though they came into the prelim fight in Round 3 and then aired the rest.

      • Mark says:

        It isn’t possible to do for boxing what UFC was able to do for MMA for several reasons.

        #1 Zuffa had zero competition to match them in the American MMA market until after they already won the war and then Elite, Affliction, Strikeforce, IFL, ect. popped up. So they had a cakewalk rising their way up. Nobody else in America was regularly on PPV, nobody else in America was able to get a TV deal, nobody else in America had a fraction of the money they had to burn. In boxing you have several big time promoters besides Oscar to throw a monkey wrench in his plans.

        #2 UFC was able to buy off so much top talent because guys weren’t making much to begin with so they could do this cheaply. It would cost more than GBP would ever want to spend to get into a bidding war over everybody.

        #3 Boxing is going to fight any promoter trying to become Zuffa like their lives depended on it. And they’re going to fight dirty, and they’d band together (briefly) if worse came to worse. It will never happen. Not in 15 years, not in 30 years.

        #4 As has been pointed out, this is all about Oscar being able to stiff guys on pay like Dana gets to. And he’ll inevitably have to get in a huge bidding war over somebody, which will make everybody demand raises, and “Oh yeah, well, then you can’t be on HBO!” won’t be enough of a threat for a guy to get his pay cut in half. Boxers aren’t MMA fighters who are marks for the cause of “building the sport”, they want to make as many millions of dollars as possible so they won’t have to be punched in the head anymore before they’re 40.

        #5 Why would HBO enter into an exclusive deal when you can’t guarantee every big star King and Top Rank promote would go over to GBP? What would GBP have to offer them? What could they possibly offer HBO to make them agree to not air anymore Pacquiao fights?

        • 45 Huddle says:

          1) Cakewalk?

          2) Most UFC talent is HOMEGROWN. The same can be done in boxing, it just takes time.

          3) At least on the US front, HBO is key to everything. They have the best promotion for PPV. They put a lot of money into the sport. Most mega fights would not happen without HBO. So if they decided to go in the direction of having only 1 promoter, it would absolutely cut many other promoters off at the legs.

          4) Dana White has never stiffed a fighter on pay. Never once has it been reported that a fighter was not paid what they were supposed to. As for the bidding war. Who is going to outbid them if they don’t have HBO as a backer? Without the guaranteed purses, that would be nearly impossible. Sure, some international events might try and do it, but there would be no incentive for them to bring over big dollar Americans.

          5) Long term growth. Create the foundation today so it performs better in the future. A guy with a vision would absolutely do this. The current HBO guys, likely not.

        • Mark says:

          1) Cakewalk?

          Cakewalk from competition. You did not have WEC and King of the Cage out to fend off Zuffa’s expansion from 2000-05. Every other promoter would be out to take down Oscar. It is a fight he can’t win. Well, he’s used to that scenario obviously, but still.

          2) Most UFC talent is HOMEGROWN. The same can be done in boxing, it just takes time.

          I love this. You’ve been all about “boxing is dead” and “boxing doesn’t have any stars people want to see besides Mayweather and Pacquaio”. And now there’s suddenly a bright and beautiful future for rookies because it fits your half thought out argument.

          There’s just as much odds as Arum or King scooping up a hot young prospect as De La Hoya. You can’t have spies in every boxing gym or at every amateur fight around the globe every day to make sure you get dibs.

          3) At least on the US front, HBO is key to everything. They have the best promotion for PPV. They put a lot of money into the sport. Most mega fights would not happen without HBO. So if they decided to go in the direction of having only 1 promoter, it would absolutely cut many other promoters off at the legs.

          HBO doesn’t care how many promoters they have to go through. They care about getting the biggest fighters on their PPVs and premium channel. So what if they have to deal with Oscar, Bob and Don all at the same time. They care about stars not promoters. And no promoter is ever going to have enough of a percentage of the top boxers under his wing that anybody would say no to a promoter who has another big star.

          If this scenario was at all possible, that HBO would be open enough to the idea of even giving one promoter a higher priority than others just because they have most of the biggest stars, then King would have accomplished this in the 90s when he was the top drawing promoter by a mile. But instead, his top fighters ended up with Showtime after Tyson asked for more money than HBO wanted to pay in 1991.

          4) Dana White has never stiffed a fighter on pay. Never once has it been reported that a fighter was not paid what they were supposed to. As for the bidding war. Who is going to outbid them if they don’t have HBO as a backer? Without the guaranteed purses, that would be nearly impossible. Sure, some international events might try and do it, but there would be no incentive for them to bring over big dollar Americans.

          I meant stiffed as in he isn’t paying them nearly what they bring in. And one of the key reasons to go into boxing instead of MMA is the hopes that you can get a $15 million paycheck instead of a $150,000 pay check plus fabled backdoor payouts that nobody is sure of. Ask Shane Carwin and Chael Sonnen about those PPV bonuses.

          Again, why would they have HBO as a backer? You have given no reason as to what Oscar could possibly do to make HBO tell Pacman to go with Showtime. Put on a lovely cocktail dress and wig again?

          5) Long term growth. Create the foundation today so it performs better in the future. A guy with a vision would absolutely do this. The current HBO guys, likely not.

          GBP or anybody looking to kill the other promoters off is in way over their heads, it won’t be done. They will be ruined financially before ever coming close to accomplishing this. UFC was able to do it because nobody else had any money in America and WWE was able to do it because they threw the promoter’s rulebook out the window and made moves nobody else had the balls to try while the competition was sleeping. Top Rank and King have more than enough money to battle Golden Boy and aside from this fantasy about HBO signing an exclusive deal with them, there’s nothing GBP can do to kill off the others. If worse came to worse they’d band together to take GBP out.

  3. David M says:

    There is no conceivable way anyone could have given Garcia that fight without being paid to do so.

  4. edub says:

    Am I the only one that saw this card as a disappointment? All we have been hearing for weeks is how insane this card is gonna be, and how great the WEC is. I thought it was pretty good, but best card of the year (which was the hype for it), I don’t think so at all.

  5. liger05 says:

    Boxing working on a UFC type model. Not a chance. I dont even think the fighters would want something like that. Oscar wants something like this as long as his calling the shots and that just aint going to happen. Boxing model’s has many many flaws but the fighters as it stands has options and a lot of power as well. No way are we seeing some UFC type model in boxing.

  6. Vic Mackey says:

    “Intense brawl” and “stand-up war” are not the words I would use to describe Frausto-Aguilar.

  7. edub says:

    Also I forgot to ask everyone earlier: Does anybody else feel a little bad for Manny? If you watch the ending in slowmotion Aldo cleary hits Manny in the back of the head at least 3 times. Shouldn’t there be at least some discussion on that.

  8. EJ says:

    I would feel bad if Manny didn’t follow a horrible gameplan and basically leave me shaking my head in disgust.

    As far as the Garcia/Hominick fight goes I had it a draw but was leaning towards Garcia. I have no clue where anyone gets this idea that Hominick clearly picked him apart and won handily that simply isn’t true.

    • The Gaijin says:

      Well I’m just not sure what fight you were watching then – maybe you’re just seeing what you wanna see, because sure, Garcia winged a ton of punches but maybe 4% of them landed. And on the other side Hominick countered him with ease, dropped and staggered him and generally made Garcia look like an amateur.

      It was like Guillard vs. Stephens, but the counter-striker actually did something of substance on offense.

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