This is a post that I've put off for awhile, but with the break in action this weekend, we're in need of some topics and the open scoring question came up again this past weekend. If you don't know what open scoring is, let me explain. Essentially, MMA is one of the only sports that I know of (along with boxing) where the athletes don't know the score of the fight (game, match, etc) until after it is over. This means that the fighters can't make any in fight adjustments based on the score. They simply have to trust their plan and trust that the judges are scoring the fight properly. That's where this idea mostly stems from. MMA judging has been unreliable at best and it is costing fighters both money and opportunities. That brings the fighter pay issue and system into play, but discussing all of these and how interconnected they are is way too much for one post of a reasonable size. I'm going to try and keep this nailed down to only the open scoring issue. I'll try to keep it brief as to not get bogged down in the details and keep it as a more theoretical discussion instead of trying to pinpoint every single issue. Anyways, to define open scoring in general, it would inform the fighters of how the judges have scored the fight at some point while the fight is actually happening. How they would be told, when they are told, and how many times they are told the score is up for debate.
Like I said in the intro, a lot of the steam for this idea comes on the back of the inconsistent and confusing MMA judging. However, solving the judging problem is an entire issue in itself and open scoring won't fix that. I think the big issues there are so numerous that it won't take any single idea or alteration to solve that problem. First and foremost, the judging just needs to get better. I'm not sure if they need more classes or certification tests or what exactly. I think getting some new blood into the rotation would help a little as well. If you've been watching MMA for any length of time, you'll notice that the judges you see on a weekly basis are almost always the same 5 or 6 judges basically every week. If you're more of a longer term fan, you'll also realize that these are the same 5 or 6 judges that we've been getting for years now. Everyone acknowledges that there's a judging problem, but we keep providing the same small group of judges and just expecting them to get better, which doesn't seem like the logical process to take. There's also the issue with the scoring system. A lot of MMA rules were adapted from the long standing ruleset of boxing, including the 10 point must system. The system really wasn't adapted much for the MMA skillset and it is a contributing factor for the unreliable judging. This is probably the hardest one to fix in my mind because it is easy to recognize the problem, but I haven't found any of the suggested fixes to be particularly compelling either. The final problem is that the scoring criteria is just too vague. The first thing a judge is looking for is "effective striking and grappling" which is a very general statement. There is not clarification in the rules as to what actually constitutes effective striking or grappling. Striking may be a little more clear as to what is effective and not, but grappling is too general of a term as there are many types and styles of grappling. Using one blanket term is fine for the discussions I do in my preview, but when outlining the actual rules of the sport, there needs to be very detailed descriptions. If there was ever a time to be detailed in the rules, it would be in the section that explains how someone actually wins. All of these problems contribute to this judging issue that is a topic of debate on almost a weekly basis. Every Monday we have to talk about "how did you score that fight" it seems.
Let's bring this back to open scoring though. Open scoring does not solve the problem with judging. To fix judging, the points that I outlined above need to be addressed. However, what open scoring does is provide a short term band-aid while those larger problems are addressed. If the judging is going to be inconsistent or down right bad, then the fighters should at least know what is happening. If a fighter is going to get screwed out of a decision that they should have won, alerting them of the score while there is still time to fight allows them to alter their strategy and at least push for a win in another way. The idea that professional athletes put all their time and effort into training and preparing for a fight, but don't get to know the score until after the contest is over is a bizarre one to say the least. Imagine that the Celtics and Heat are playing the eastern conference finals game tonight and there is no scoreboard and no one can know what the score of the game is until after the game is over. The comparison doesn't even fully make sense because the teams could have someone calculating the scores on the sideline because the scoring is clearly defined. In MMA, the scoring is not very well defined, so there is no way for the corners to calculate the score on the fly. Every week we see the fighter talking to their corner and they'll say "hey, you're down 2-0, we need to go for the finish" or "it's 1-1, we need this round". Just a few weeks ago, we saw Pat Barry tell Rose Namajunas that she was up 4-0 going into the fifth round of her title fight and then Rose went on to lose 3 rounds on multiple judges score cards. While that was poor cornering on the part of Barry because there was no way he could or should have been confident that Rose was up 4-0, that type of speculation isn't required in any other sport. Before I have this paragraph going on forever, let's make a separate section for the positives.
The main positive of open scoring is that the fighters get to know where they stand during the fight. If they're winning, losing, or tied, they get to know and can then adjust what they're doing based on that. If a football team is losing, they can adjust their plan and start throwing the ball more and deeper down the field in order to try and catch up. They'll utilize the sideline to get out of bounds and stop to clock to preserve time. The team that is leading will run the ball more and keep the clock running in order to preserve their lead. This dynamic doesn't exist in MMA because no one ever knows what the score is. This dynamic really intrigues me about open scoring. Obviously it is beneficial to the fighters themselves, but the strategic component would be interesting to me as a fan watching. It would put a lot of pressure on the corners to make in fight adjustments when they know they're down. The other main positive that those in favor of open scoring is that they believe it will provide added drama to the fight. If the score cards flash before the final round of a fight and we see that it is tied and everyone knows it, the fighters will come out with everything they have because they know this round decides the whole fight. They believe that knowing the score is tied will give you that same feeling as when a team in football is trying to run the 2-minute drill and trying to kick a game winning field goal before time expires. That is more of a secondary reason though and the main just comes back to the fighters. Obviously, the decision of a fight has a drastic impact on the trajectory of someone's career. Most fighters in this sport get one real run at the title and if a decision goes against them that otherwise shouldn't have, that could ruin their one chance at fighting for and winning the belt. More importantly, the decision actually effects the fighters' pay. If you didn't know, the UFC and other major MMA promotions use a "show/win" system of pay, This means that you get a certain sum of money for making weight and fighting and then you can earn an additional sum of money if you win. Those amounts of money are typically the same. For example, you'll often hear of the prelim fighters being "10/10" or "12/12". When this is spoken, they will say "10 and 10" or "12 and 12" meaning the fighter will make $10,000 to show up and fight and can make an additional $10,000 if they win. When the fighters pay can literally change by half based on the decision of the judges, it only seems fair that they at least know the score at some point of the fight, so that if they are losing, they can adjust and try to go all out for a win late.
As with anything, there are also some negatives to the potential introduction of open scoring. Some people are concerned that it may expose judges and will discourage them from judging the fight how they actually see it. Instead of judging the fight as they see it, they will be encouraged to judge the fight in a way that is safe and works to not cause outrage rather than just doing their job as they see fit. I've only heard this argument once though, so I won't spend too much time on it. I think the main concern with open scoring is the potential for stalling. If the scores come in and a fighter is up multiple rounds going into the final round, they now have no incentive to really go all out. All they have to do is survive that final round and they'll win the decision. This is more of a concern for MMA because the sport relies a bit more on the entertainment side of things than the other sports do. Fans will get upset during the fight if there's not enough action even when both fighters are actually trying, let alone if one fighter is running or stalling in order to go to decision. I think that the final main argument against open scoring is the fan engagement. Not knowing the score until the fight is over provides a lot of excitement when the score is being read, especially in a title fight when you're waiting for Bruce Buffer to say "and new" or "and still" when announcing the winner. If the crowd were to know the score going into the fifth round, the fight may have already been decided and now there is no intrigue in the reading of the decision. Even if it was tied going into the last round, if it was an easy round to judge now it is clear who won with no anticipation or excitement.
I tried my best to just lay out the arguments there without injecting my opinion so that you can come to your own conclusion before I give my take. For something that is such a hot talking point in MMA over the last few months, I really don't have a passionate opinion here. I think I stand somewhere in the realm of "I would be interested to see it". The point that we can all agree on is that the judging simply isn't good enough. This won't fix that, but it will at least give the fighters a chance to do something about the poor judging in real time. That is something that I can get behind. The fact that the judges alter the fighters pay based on the show/win means something to me as well. If the fighters were just paid a rate and the judges decision was strictly about wins and losses and didn't mess with someone's livelihood, then I wouldn't care nearly as much. I'm certainly not in the crowd that is just all for open scoring and acts like it is just the most obvious decision in the world though. I think my biggest reason for skepticism is that there isn't really a clear plan on how to institute open scoring even amongst those that are in favor of it. Everyone has different opinions on who should be told the score, how often they should be told, and how they are told. Do just the fighters find out or does the crowd find out too? Do they find out after every round or just after some rounds? It is hard for me to just support something when the fundamental principles behind the idea are so unclear. I would need a more solidified idea and system in order to approve or reject it outright. Selfishly, I do enjoy not knowing the score until the decision is read. From the perspective of someone sitting on the couch, it makes the fight infinitely more exciting to not know and try to playa along with it. I think sitting with my family and trying to figure out who is winning is fun. However, that is only a limited perspective. The people who are actually effected by the decision don't have fun guessing whether they're winning or not. It seems simple to prioritize the athletes because they're the ones who are putting in all of the risk. However, sports are ultimately an entertainment product and if you start making decisions that diminish the fan experience, that is going to alter the bottom line and we know no one wants to do that either. Ultimately, I think open scoring is an idea that is worth entertaining and would at least help patch an issue until more significant changes can be made to improve the judging.
I think a way to do it that would satisfy the most people has been outlined by Ariel Helwani on multiple occasions on The MMA Hour. I may be altering it slightly, but I can't be 100% because he throws out so many ideas that I'm not sure which is actually his preference and what are just suggestions. The part that I think I'm altering is that I think he wants the scores to show on a scoreboard or something. In my system, only the corners and the fighters would be able to know. Whether someone from the commission would relay that information to them or if they had some kind of iPad or something can be figured out, but I think that information should only be relayed to the corner. I think this is the best way to help the fighters, but still maintain the excitement in the arena with the fans who don't know the score. I don't particularly put much stock in the stalling argument, but this is where I'm in full agreement with Ariel. His idea was to avoid stalling by getting rid of the current bonus system and replacing it with a general "finish bonus". Anyone who finishes the fight gets a flat bonus of whatever amount. That would encourage the leading fighter not to stall enough in my estimation. The referee can already warn for stalling in the current rules, so I don't think there's much that would really need to change on that front.
I don't really understand the outrage that comes with this topic though. Some people are ready to go to war over this and I really don't get it. Those who are against it act like if someone tries it out then it is an irreversible decision. If a promotion or commission tries it and it doesn't work or creates more problems, then they can just remove it and go back to the system we have now. However, there are some people who act like open scoring is just a cure all for the entire sport and that just isn't true either. Ultimately, if the fighters really wanted this, then they could band together and get it done. The fact of the matter is that the fighters aren't, so either they don't want it or don't care enough to push for it. If the fighters aren't passionate enough to really be vocal about this for themselves, then I can't really be passionate about it either. My opinion is that I would like to see it just out of curiosity and to see how it works. However, I don't think we'll see it happen any time soon because it realistically needs to be paired with other rule changes. Because wins and losses are so tied to the fighter pay structure, that has to be addressed and that is an entirely different issue itself.
What do you guys think? Are you interested in seeing open scoring? What system do you think would be best? What are your concerns with it? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
Comments
Post a Comment