As we enter a new year one thing remains more relevant and timely than ever, MMA judging and scoring remains an absolute mess. Since the inception of the "Unified Rules" of MMA in the early 2000s and their approval in 2001 not much has truly changed despite numerous amendments and tweaks in the years since. Just think how we only recently finally got 12-6 elbows just this past November. A reversal of the ban long overdue and a glaring showcase of just how bastardized and decaying the ruleset is, but now allow me to elaborate.
A BRIEF HISTORY
A discussion about scoring and judging in MMA has to start with a little bit about the rules. I encourage readers to look at the latest adaptation of the Unified Rules of MMA to see for themselves a few things I'm going to go over. This is far more preferable than me just copy and pasting the most glaring issues myself but of course I will specifically mention the biggest issues I see with the rules. After all, the rules provide the scoring framework and notify the judges what they are supposed to be looking at and judging. There are even sections that go over how to handle a hometown favorite, what to do if the judge notices a foul the referee does not, etc. In short it really is quite in depth. There's even a guide on the UFC's official website that goes over training for referees and judges along with a list of goals that must be accomplished to be a referee or judge.
So imagine my shock as I looked over this and the Unified Rules and asked myself, with all this training, experience, requirements, etc. to become a judge how is it even now we still have countless scoring and judging errors? I started this project expecting to go scorched-earth on judges but honestly as I did more research and talked to more people involved with this sport I started to get sympathetic. I realized just how arbitrary, random, and subjective a lot of the Unified Rules are and understood quickly how confusing it can get.
The Unified Rules of MMA are basically a PR stunt that morphed into something far larger than anticipated in my humble opinion. Remember the 90s when the UFC was first established was a different time for the company. It was not as popular as it is now and even now it's still relatively niche compared to other mainstream professional sports. American football and basketball have been around since the late 1800s and have had time to figure things out but as we see later this is no excuse for MMA. In any case, the Unified Rules came about in the early 2000s as a result of the UFC trying to clean up it's image and expand to a greater audience.
The UFC was hemorrhaging money during this time and every year was in a deficit. Political pressure in America was pushing against the sport with U.S. Senator John McCain infamously categorizing MMA as "human cockfighting". We won't get deep into the weeds with how fortunes changed so to stay on topic let's just say as a result of this time the UFC decided to go with the Unified Rules of MMA to try and legitimize the sport and these were later adopted by the Association of Boxing Commissions unanimously in 2009. Years after being approved in 2001. Everything was fine after right? Wrong.
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF RULES
Let's go ahead and get confusing. This article will specifically go over the "Unified Rules" of MMA. I put quotations because though the rules are supposed to be unified or you know, covering all MMA organizations in America at least, they are in fact not unified at all. The UFC is the primary adopter of these rules. RIZIN, Pride when it existed, One Championship, etc. have different variations on their rulesets. For example much was made of Kai Asakura recently in his debut with Pantoja because Asakura came from Rizin. A lot of finishes Asakura achieved in fights in Rizin would have been fight ending fouls in the UFC. Hence why to keep an already confusing situation a little more clear and for the sake of time and sanity, we will cover the UFC. We also won't go into fouls and referees because those issues are insanely difficult and confusing in their own right.
The Unified Rules came about as an adaptation of boxing rules. In the early days of the UFC remember this was basically a new sport. Yes Vale Tudo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, various forms of wrestling had existed for centuries before this but it was the mixing of the arts that required a scoring system. Remember earlier I said the UFC had to make this more credible and friendly to the public to finally get out of debt and other issues? By adopting boxing rules this led to the first issue with the Unified Rules and scoring. Boxing has 3 judges and most commonly 12 rounds now a days. That's 36 possible points. MMA at the UFC level if a fight isn't a main event or championship bout most commonly has 3 round fights. 3 judges, 3 rounds, and the highest amount of points you can get from each judge is 10 points. A 10 means you have all points possible from that judge.
If you're already lost I don't blame you. Let's just briefly go over the possible scores as a result of this.
10–10 Round “A 10 – 10 round in MMA is when both fighters have competed for whatever duration of time in the round and there is no difference or advantage between either fighter.” A 10 – 10 round in MMA should be extremely rare and is not a score to be used as an excuse by a judge that cannot assess the differences in the round".
10–9 Round “A 10 – 9 Round in MMA is where one combatant wins the round by a close margin.” A 10 – 9 round in MMA is the most common score a judge assesses during the night. If, during the round, the judge sees a fighter land the better strikes, or utilize effective grappling during the competition, even if by just one technique over their opponent, the judge shall give the winning fighter a score of 10 while assessing the losing fighter a score of 9 or less".
10–8 Round A 10 – 8 Round in MMA is where one fighter wins the round by a large margin. A 10 – 8 round in MMA is not the most common score a judge will render, but it is absolutely essential to the evolution of the sport and the fairness to the fighters that judges understand and effectively utilize the score of 10 – 8. A score of 10 – 8 does not require a fighter to dominate their opponent for 5 minutes of a round. The score of 10 – 8 is utilized by the judge when the judge sees verifiable actions on the part of either fighter. Judges shall ALWAYS give a score of 10 – 8 when the judge has established that one fighter has dominated the action of the round, had duration of the domination and also impacted their opponent with either effective strikes or effective grappling maneuvers that have diminished the abilities of their opponent".
All of these descriptions are lifted directly from the Unified Rules of MMA PDF available online. Credit to the Unified Rules. Notice how this language is subjective? Subjective meaning open to interpretation. It's not objective or defined by stats, numbers, science etc. It's do you as a judge FEEL that the fighter is executing effective striking and grappling? That is supposed to be Plan A or first priority in judging according to the rules by the way. Aggressiveness is Plan B and once again according to the rules shouldn't even be considered if effective striking and grappling was shown by either fighter. Plan C is Cage control and once again shouldn't even be accounted unless plan A and B are not obvious. It's also supposed to be an extremely rare occurrence for this to be a factor once again lifted straight from the ruleset itself. How then do we constantly have issues?
MY OPINION OF THE ISSUES
The Judges themselves are confused. There's no concrete number, no detailed description of what effective striking and grappling is, just basically do you feel a fighter is dominating the action? What is the impact of their takedowns? Don't even get me started on takedowns because it waffles back and forth on what counts for more effective and more noteworthy between striking and grappling. Once again with just a worded description. I feel putting a number to it would help greatly. Speaking of numbers we have a 10 point system that I discussed above reminding me I left out a 10-7 is possible also. This is an absolute beatdown however and supposed to be a rare score. Back to this point though, I've never heard of a 10-6 for example in the UFC. Why even have a 10 point system if the rules themselves say a 10-7 alone is supposed to be rare along with a 10-10? My point being not all of these numbers are even being used. It's redundant and a leftover from boxing. There's Nothing below a 7 and nothing higher than 10 so why have a full 10 points possible? I saw someone suggest to account for fouls potentially but I'm not even going to dive into fouls and issues with those calls.
Damage is king. This is the biggest misconception. Under impact which I'm interpreting as damage the Unified Rules state "A judge shall assess if a fighter impacts their opponent significantly in the round, even though they may not have dominated the action. Impact includes visible evidence such as swelling and lacerations. Impact shall also be assessed when a fighter’s actions, using striking and/or grappling, lead to a diminishing of their opponents’ energy, confidence, abilities and spirit. All of these come as a direct result of impact. When a fighter is impacted with strikes, by lack of control and/or ability, this can create defining moments in the round and shall be assessed with great value". Great but where does this fit into our earlier Plan A, B, C, system we devised at the very beginning of the rules? Where does this take precedence? Is it plan D? What is meant by great value? Very subjective and unclear yet again. Is it fight winning value? Enough to edge a close decision? It then contradicts the earlier rules it came up with itself when it says you can have impact which is supposedly of "great value" even if you didn't dominate the action. So which is worth more? Whatever you feel? That's the problem. Rules that leave more questions than answers.
Numerous contradictions abound with the official Unified Rules. It's highly subjective and unclear, along with confusing. As a result it's no surprise we get judges deferring to their own personal system and just skipping over Plan A, B, and C and going straight to damage for example even though the rules themselves discourage this. No wonder we have crazy decisions and weird splits. Another issue is the referees each sit at different areas. There is no single table. John McCarthy at least as of 2022 even stated one referee has to watch the fight looking through the closed cage door. Basically watching through a mesh screen. You can imagine how this influences what they are seeing, and not in a good way. It's the referee's job to cover different vantage points. It's why they are in the cage and monitoring for fouls etc. The judges need a neutral and even vantage point seated right next to each other. They each would then have the same physical view and each have a monitor to watch the fight with also should they choose. There's no excuse why we should have insane seating arrangements that negatively impact judging and scoring.
SOLUTIONS
It's easy to complain and trust me I have a lot more evidence and issues with scoring and judging I could get into. To save time though I'll move on. Why is this an issue in the first place? Fighters lose half their pay instantly with a bad decision. Any loss but especially painful when there is a controversial decision loss. Once again fighter pay is itself an entirely different issue worthy of it's own article and video but we are talking about judging and scoring. After doing research on both I'm pessimistic as to anything changing with either but I'm starting by trying to change judging and scoring. For the UFC to be legitimate it needs legitimate scoring and judging. Imagine the NFL and NBA where depending on what venue or state you are playing at the points value for a touchdown or basket changes? It sounds funny but going back to the laughable nature of the "Unified" rules it's basically what happens in the UFC. One prominent example is Colorado uses open scoring. This means the fighters and audience are aware in between rounds of the scores. There's no suspense at the end of a fight. You can see how this is an issue. Variations such as those abound state to state, commission to commission. Fighters have to juggle so many different rulesets depending on commission and state along with the judges themselves. Oh right I'm in X state this isn't like last weekend X rule isn't at play. Another issue to juggle for judges and fighters. How do we look at solutions?
THREE THE HARD WAY
I see three ways out. Option One, leave things as they are. Honestly most likely. Change whether positive or negative is hard for us. Far easier to be complacent and leave things as they are than risk changing a broken scoring system and judging.
Option Two is my preferred. A balance or compromise between AI and human input. Check out MMA Judge Analyzer on Twitter, @Judgeanalyzer. I don't want to misunderstand his work but go poke around on his page and see how it works for yourself. A brief overview won't do it justice but I'll try. It's a software developed in house by him that he manually inputs data in real time during fights into the system. The system then graphs, charts, etc. the data that is put in. It's basically him judging a fight himself but using the software to show his work and see whether or not it matches up with the official scorecards. If it doesn't it lets him see where the deviation was. I rail against the subjectivity of the rules but it's because right now it's too subjective. This is the best solution to me because AI is also not infallible, it makes mistakes too. There is a human to keep the AI in check and vice versa. Plus there is merit to feelings and emotions from fighting. Hearing a strike in person, seeing reactions from fighters, even smells etc. are not currently a thing AI is capable of processing. The AI can do numbers and recording of data far better than a human however.
Option Three. Probably what we are heading towards. Check out Jabbr.ai, It's insane. Full AI scoring. Fury VS. Usyk was the most recent rolling out of AI for judging. Though I believe just a trial run it's already better than a lot of human judges. Jabbr in particular already measures aggression and cage or ring control. It also does your standard score from strikes but on steroids. What type of strike? what hand threw the strike? was it significant? what portion or percentage of offense came from this? Etc. Insane. I personally prefer humans to keep their jobs but AI is already here and a warning of just how drastic changes need to be to keep the human element in scoring and judging.
CONCLUSION
MMA judging and scoring is plagued with unclear and contradictory rules. The current rules lead to too much subjectivity and result in egregious calls as judges don't know or understand what takes precedence, what even is meant by the rules. They can't even get seating arrangement down. One last thing I propose is small and incremental changes to the rules. Maybe test out changes at small venues like the Contender Series or something and see what works and what doesn't? A trial run to hash out issues before mainstream adoption. The Unified Rules have been amended, changed, whatever you want to say about 9 times since 2001. This hasn't solved anything and we still have issues. Change is in order. The NFL by extension has changed the ruleset a whopping 50 times since 2002. The result? I feel even with all the changes the NFL is far easier to understand and follow than the UFC and MMA as a whole. Even seasoned viewers such as myself struggle to understand rules and scoring when it seems to change fight to fight let alone card to card.
AI is here. It's already being rolled out for judging. Fighters lose half their pay with a loss it's reality. It's even worse with a controversial decision. While I wouldn't mind Adalaide Byrd getting the boot, I know there are good judges out there and it's not funny when someone loses their job to Skynet.
If you enjoyed this article and want it in video form, head over to the Bettor in Green YouTube page to watch the video we did over this topic. Thank you.
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