MMA/UFC Discussion Thread MMA • Page 419

Usman will be champ for awhile.

I think Burns matches up well though. His grappling is really really great and Usman would likely be uncomfortable for long periods on the ground with him. Burns has some fantastic BJJ

 

Usman/Burns is a fight I really want to see. Masvidal was a better sell in terms of name value, so I understand the hype, but Burns matches up way better stylistically than Masvidal did.

 

Max won

 

Was really interesting to see that Masvidal's striking very quickly was causing issues for Usman. Goes to say how bad Colby's striking is since I feel like Usman ate many more direct punches from him, but remained in the pocket fine for 25 minutes. He's a solid challenge, very dominant much like many other wrestlers like him.

I think i'm gonna actually start betting on cards. I had every fight right for the main card outside of Holloway vs Volkanovski (and we all know it should've been Max's hand raised anyways.)

 

Also just read some interesting facts from Mike Bohn:

 

Best poster in a longgggg time.
Speaking of, Pride posters still the GOAT

 

So I totally missed the fact that Bisping and Henderson were tweeting each other while Mike was commentating last night.

And I believe he’s since deleted it but he also told Hendo he’d lend him some money for his failing gym lol.

 

neither guy looks very good here

 

Max losing really bummed me out. I'm not even a fan but he won that fight easily imo

I also find Volkanovski to be a very boring personality and even more boring fighter and hope he gets beat soon

whole thing is bullshit

 

Been thinking about this for the last couple of days, and I really think this is one of the best examples of the 10-9 system not working. It's nearly the same as GSP-Hendricks.

Intuitively (and emotionally), it's hard not to feel like Max won the fight when you look back on it, yet somehow he still didn't win the decision. Rounds can be totally different and still scored 10-9, so the two rounds where Max looked phenomenal and scored knockdowns were weighted the same as the rounds where it was practically even. Something is wrong with that.

It's disappointing that Max can put on a beating and also face little to no adversity and still not win. If the fights were judged as a whole or if the rounds were weighted to a more varying degree, it would put more emphasis on the significant moments of the fight.

Of course, maybe this is irrelevant because I thought Max won three rounds anyway, but still.

 

I think Volkanovski is very beatable. I think Zabit would crush him if he gets a shot after getting by Yair.

 

there definitely seems to be at least some preferential treatment towards champions. to where you have to finish the fight if you hope to beat them at all. that needs to change, the judges need to better, and we need better refs too a lot of the time

it's fucking up the sport

 

We need more former fighters as judges. I feel like most of these judges don't watch a ton of MMA or understand what's going on half of the time.

 

Rogan said the other night on his fight podcast that the vast majority of these judges don't know a fucking thing about MMA

 

I feel like bias might be worse in this case tbh. I think we might just need people who have at least trained in some discipline

 

I'd also love if they revealed scores after each round. That way if someone's being fucked like Max, they can at least know and do something about it. I feel so bad for him especially since its the 2nd straight loss to Volk. I highly doubt he gets an automatic rematch. Give him the winner of Kattar/Ige and if he wins book the rematch.

 

Yeah I agree at the very least, they could release scores after each round. They do it in boxing, why not this combat sport as well?

 

They do?

I’m by no means a boxing diehard, but I’ve always just seen the commentators put their scores up on screen during bouts, not actual open scoring from the judges.

Am I wrong? Is it an in arena thing and not shown on tv? I’ve never been to a boxing event.

 

You’re right, that’s what I remember seeing when I used to watch the sport. Being unfamiliar with their commentators, the names weren’t something I ever paid attention to and I haven’t watched in years outside of highlights.

 

Ahh okay, gotcha. Easy mistake to make. The first few boxing matches I watched, I took the scores on screen as the actual scores too, and was confused when they didn’t line up after the fights lol

That being said, I’d love to see open scoring implanted in MMA and boxing going forward, but I know that idea has been being tossed around for quite some time now so I’m not expecting any significant changes anytime soon.

 

Yeah it seems like the basic argument against open scoring is the effect it could have on the mentality of the fighters and the crowd as the fight continues.

 

Was heartbroken for Max, especially after so many analysts were saying he was basically screwed for taking the rematch right away and saying he wouldn’t have anything for Volkanovski. I know Volk bested him in that first fight but I felt like there was too much dismissal of what Max Holloway is capable of.

With that being said, it’s definitely more of a “the judging system sucks” than a “these judges suck” IMO. I rewatched the fight and the last three rounds were tossups (rd 5 was a good one for Volk but nowhere near as clear as 1 and 2) that I could definitely understand how you score them for Volk.

It just sucks when one fighter clearly wins two rounds, hurting his opponent, and the other three rounds could go either way — and all the swing rounds go to the other guy. Whether you’re a casual fan or a diehard who understands the system and everything, it’s real tough to watch that fight and think “yeah the right guy won”.

 

Judges get too stuck in the “to be the champ, you have to beat the champ” mindset. You could argue that’s why Jones still has the belt at 205.

The point system needs to be better.

 

I love this account and this style of judging, and I think it demonstrates a clearer picture of who won the fight as a whole. The "Global Scorecard" style judging of each round works really well in my opinion because it gives more weight to significant moments (Max's knockdowns) in a really competitive/close fight. The real "robbery" is that Alex's rounds 3-4 carried the same weight as Max's rounds 1-2.

I imagine it would be a little tough to implement though. You would need to revamp the criteria so they can score the deficit of each round more objectively and not base the later rounds relative to how they already scored the previous ones (if that makes sense).

Even in this instance though, the people thought that Max won round 3 which would have meant he should have won by the current criteria anyway.

 

Jiri already almost ranked in the top 5 lol