[fitguy67]

The following Word Blizzard was originally posted in another thread as a response to someone merely mentioning the prevalence of "controversial decisions"...

In light of yesterday's Sanchez Debacle (congrats to all Diego backers...we've all been on the right side and got the wrong result...nice to see the opposite happening can help someone out)...i thought this worth a re-package.
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In a nutshell, the sport has never REALLY been able to decide if it's a "beauty-contest" or a "damage contest"...used to fall heavily on the side of the latter...till the popularity of Ali and Ray-Fukkin'Leonard in the 70s and 80s swayed things the other way to it's current ambivalent state...therein lies the rub

anyone want to know what the problem is with judging...and why you and even your best friends--whose judgement you respect--can't see eye to eye...after watching THE SAME fight...do this

watch RayLeonard and Marvin Hagler's fight...yes, it's decades old...but that is the night that the sort of shit-judging we bemoan to this day got jet-propelled...by rewarding the competitor who got badly out-damaged with the "decision" in a mega-fight...so, if you want to understand the systemic judging-schizophrenia that makes any APPARENTLY-CLOSE fight SEEM closer than it really was...hence makes any decision rendered on it SEEM more controversial than it was...go back to the last key "turning point" in the evolution of judging in modern combat sports

anyhow, WATCH LEONARD-HAGLER AND AFTER EACH & EVERY ROUND ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION AND THIS QUESTION ONLY: WHO WOULD I HAVE RATHER BEEN THAT ROUND?
THEN GIVE THE GUY YOU WOULD HAVE RATHER BEEN 10...AND GIVE THE OTHER GUY 9 OR EVEN LESS IN DIRECT PROPORTION TO HOW BADLY YOU WOULD HAVE HATED TO BE THAT GUY!!!

NOTE: IF YOU REALLY CAN'T DECIDE WHO YOU'D RATHER HAVE BEEN IN THAT ROUND--HONESTLY COULDN'T DECIDE...CUZ YOU'D HATE TO BE EITHER OF 'EM EQUALLY...THEN IT'S A 10-10 ROUND (HERE'S ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH MODERN JUDGING...THE DAMN-NEAR DISAPPPEARANCE OF THE 10-10, NO ONE SHOULD "LOSE A ROUND" ON ANY SCORECARD CUZ THE JUDGE STRETCHES TO "SAVE HIS FACE"...NOT WANTING TO APPEAR "INDECISIVE"...)

DO THE ABOVE, AND TELL ME THAT IT WAS A CLOSE FIGHT...AND THAT THERE WAS ANY REASONABLE CASE SUPPORTING LEONARD AS "WINNER"...

SIMPLIFY THE JUDGING CRITERIA...AND VIRTUALLY ELIMINATE THE "CONTROVERSY"...
I LOVE COMABATIVE SPORTS BUT I LOATHE THE AMBIGUOUSLY-TERMED COUNTER-INTUITIVE HORSESHIT THAT PASSES FOR THE JUDGING OF IT

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Word-Blizzard mostly over...google Marvin Hagler, watch the only professional fight he was "judged" to have lost...and you'll know what i'm saying: WHO WOULD YOU HAVE RATHER FUKKING BEEN? Honestly, no secondary bullshit like "ring generalship"...just WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE BEEN? sounds crude, but if this simple sentence were used to score any combative sport...the majority of the controversy would disappear...(by THIS criterion...was GSP "over" Hendricks correct in any way? Again, watched/judged by THIS single clear criterion...was it even close...or controversial in any way?)...

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so the solution is: to determine which of the following is the PRIME objective of the sport:

1. it's a contest to "demonstrate that you skill is better" than your opponent's (aka. it's a "beauty contest")

OR

2. it's a contest to legally (ie. within the confines of the rules of the sport) inflict damage on your opponent (aka. it's a "damage contest)

You must decide on ONE and ONLY ONE of these as the declared PRIME OBJECTIVE OF THE SPORT...

THEN...bring ALL officiating in line with that decision...do not dilute it with secondary criteria that may/may not be associated with that PRIME objective (eg. you can be clearly more aggressive, exhibit far better "ring generalship/octagon control" and even perform your techniques far more beautifully than your opponent AND be getting lit up terribly)...

repeat, bring ALL officiating in line with with it...and nothing else (apart from ensuring the legality of all actions performed in an effort to win and appropriately punishing violations)

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Note: PLEASE choose the "damage contest" option which would bring back "who would you rather have been that round?" as the DE FACTO centrepiece of judging...

unless, of course u want all combat sports to be variants of Olympic boxing/professional point-fighting)...with all the protection from controversial decisions that's provided

[fitguy67]

continuing on (damn, the strong aroma of "you need to get a life buddy!!!!" coffee is filling my nostrils)
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Is the type of judging-philosophy overhaul I'm talking about likely to ever occur...

of course not...we'll just continue to muddle along, co-existing with the unspoken schizophrenia ("skill assessment" or "damage assessment") that has judges sitting side by side, seeing the exact same things, but "interpreting" them different because no one wants to come out and declare ONE PRIME OBJECTIVE that can be used to judge the effectiveness all of the action they'e supposed to be judging.

What we have now is exactly analogous to picking three men (some fascinated by and some fascinated by asses) at random and expecting some consistency in the judging of a MissNudeWold contest.

I didn't even watch the chandler fight but i saw the press conference and it was a refreshing to see that the guy who looked beat to sh*t actually lost the fight. Will Brooks didn't have a mark on him. Chandler on the other hand....Same with Mo and Rampage. Personally i'm glad they werent giving points for TD's and doing absolutely nothing with them (speaking of the Rampage fight). I know I know, there's more to it than who looks worse, but whatever, it's a fight right? I vote No. 2!

I heard people saying the same thing...I agree to an extent....the battle continues...Rampage in no way won that 3rd round but OVERALL he did do more damage haha

You're missing the most important part, which is that the fights are scored round by round. Giving Rampage any round other than two is idiotic, and pretty much amounts to giving points for missed strikes.

[fitguy67]

continuing on...after a Visine break

i turn my attention to MD's point that the "round by round"ness of things itself is problematic
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good point, indeed...a good interim step to get "scorecards"closer to being a true reflection of what went on, and in line with your comment, would be to add one card, representing a score on the "fight as a whole"...a three-rounder would have four cards from each judge...R1, R2, R3...and FC (full contest) for fights going the distance...

eventually the FC score could be weighted more heavily...eg. count double...so a fighter who pitched a 3-round shutout could win, say 50-45 even tho' it were only a 3 rounder...then triple-weighted where the "fight taken as a whole' would account for 50% of the score (preferable to now, where it gets absolute zero weight)

ideally, if a supreme being judged a fight...there' be only that FC score "submitted"/revealed to Bruce Buffer, lol

as an educator, i've never liked marking an essay by paragraph, or by "points made"...always preferred to assign a score based on the quality of the whole effort (wrt. its effectiveness, efficiency, and perhaps even "elegance")...I find it makes me deliberate (aka. assess/evaluate="judge" in the full sense of the word) more carefully than the piecemeal approach

a related issue is that judges are FAR TOO hesitant to give out any scores OTHER THAN goddam 10-9...i'd like to see more 10-8s, 10-7s, hell even the odd 10-6 to reflect disproportionate levels of dominance that are currently unaccouned for with the fashion to 10-9 uniscore

AND, as i posted above in #3, i'd like to see more 10-10s as well, as it's bullshit to arbitrarily give a round to one guy cuz you don't want to appear "indecisive"...part of the reason why we have so many split and even unanimous robberies (eg. Davis "over" Machida)

if 95% of all rounds are 10-9 scores, net of penalty-deductions, of course (and i'd say this is a low estimate for the figure)...the judges are damn-well NOT judging...they're "scoring", yes but they are NOT "assessing"/"guaging"/"evaluating" ...they're just like teenagers giving thumbs up (ie. a "10-9") or down (ie. a "9-10") to a new song they're asked to "rate"...a seal could probably be trained to auto-dole out the 10-9s with their nose on a lever, based on the sounds and shadow movements emanating from the cage at least as reliably... as the idiots now lock-stepped into generally-mindless (almost arbitrary) "10-9ism"

it was refreshing at B120 that by simple "luck of the draw" we got some judges who made intelligent use of the 10-8, otherwise Brooks wouldn't have had a prayer of even getting a draw...the damn television announcer was locked into a "3 rounds to 2" drone, apparently thinking that anything other than 1-round differentials required senate approval...

with 10-9 uni-scores deciding each and every round of the the VAST majority of fights, it's exactly like declaring for a baseball game that "team A wins the game 2 innings to 1 with 6 drawn" (even tho' B scored 11 runs overall to team A's 5...but the single inning they won, say by a big margin like 7-1 is counted the same as each of A's two 1-run margin innings)...Brooks' R3 was clearly his "big inning" of the fight...it's great (and quite rare, actually...lucky for Brooks in that sense) that some judges were hip to that beat

[fitguy67]

and finally...

I totally agree they need to give out more 10-8 rounds....If a guy completely dominates a guy and gets a 10-9 its stupid...they get the same score as a man who slightly edged another guy and forced a judge to give one guy a 10 and the other a 9...It seems overall he takedown is getting less credit unless you do something with it but it still makes it hard to point the other guy... is seem like they are going the damage route and im ok w that really

...let the discussion continue

[fitguy67]

let's see some sensible "word blizzards" on this without the "monopoly man" avatar beside it

[Skel]

I agree about the lack of 10-10 rounds. I often hear people describing a round as "extremely close" or saying "it could have gone either way". Well, those rounds should be scored 10-10. 10-8 rounds should be much more common as well. With the judging we have now, a guy gets the same reward on the scorecards (one point) whether he barely edges his opponent or dominates him the whole round. 10-7s should be very rare but possible.
10-10: very close round
10-9: clear winner
10-8: dominant round with large damage discrepancy
10-7: loser gets beat within an inch of his life but somehow survives

[TheCalculator]

Very cogent thoughts. I agree with you. Unfortunately no one is going to give a fat fiddlers fawk.

[fitguy67]

agree...there's money to be made from the cycle of controversy and imperfect resolution to it (which just generates more of same)...the PT=Barnum model of entertainment...and like it or not commercialized sports is part of "show business"...if contests had clear-cut "fair" judging ...there'd be less of a case to be made for rematches etc...

shit decisions are boxing/mma's non-orchestrated equivalent to the referee being the only person out of the 20,000 in the building at Summerslam who doesn't see the folding chair being "snuck" into the ring when he's distracted by the heel's henchmen...

the shit decision is one more source of injustice/conflict/gardent-variety "things needing to be set right" that call for another event that the entertainees will need/want to pay for...

sucks for those who think sports should be about the sports tho...

but for the entertainment-industry pimps...controversy is good...why clean up a good reliable source of it?...so let the useless "skill assessment" angle compete with the useful "damage assesment" focus...


IF it was important to the powers that be, the root causes of the inconsistent-judging epidemic could be exposed to the light in a one-weekend workshop :

bullet points of that workshop

-->WWYRHB: The Fundamental Principle (Who Would You Rather Have Been)...or more usefully stated (Who are you most glad your weren't?)

-->"10-points must" revisited, pt1: When in doubt: why not 10-10?

-->"10 points must" revisited, pt2: When NOT in doubt: why stop at 9 or 8?
(at this point break into groups and watch tape until they realize. say, R1 for Maynard-Edgar#2 was at least 10-7, possibly even a 10-6 Maynard round)

Take home Cliff's Notes Version of the Workshop, emblazoned on T-shirts and bumber-stickers: Down with knee-jerk 10-9ism!

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how complicated is it to judge a fight, REALLY...how complicated is it?...as long as you realize it's a fight...and think of it as such...it's natural when you watch a REAL fight to think in terms of who came out "second best"=who would you have hated to be more...if it's legitimately hard to say, don't bullshit with a 10-9 (that's not fair to the one you're short-changing just to save admitting your indecision)...conversely if the honest answer to the question was a very strong relief you're not fighter B...then don't be afraid to go lower than nine on fighter B's score...no need for senate-approval to give a 10-8 or even lower...

it's not complicated...watch the fight as a fight...and be honest as to the degree you're glad you're not the one you're giving the lower number to...
it's not ballet or gymnastics...we're not guaging demonstrations of skill...it's assessing damage

[fitguy67]

I agree about the lack of 10-10 rounds. I often hear people describing a round as "extremely close" or saying "it could have gone either way". Well, those rounds should be scored 10-10. 10-8 rounds should be much more common as well. With the judging we have now, a guy gets the same reward on the scorecards (one point) whether he barely edges his opponent or dominates him the whole round. 10-7s should be very rare but possible.
10-10: very close round
10-9: clear winner
10-8: dominant round with large damage discrepancy
10-7: loser gets beat within an inch of his life but somehow survives

how you describe a 10-7 i've seen once...Edgar surviving Maynard in R1 of their second fight...amazing recoverability demonstrated there...make that twice i've seen a 10-7...cuz the second-to-last round in E.Silva v. Brown was unbelievably brutal as well...

10-10 should be more common...and so should 10-8's...if the judges were really doing their job, both would be true