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[Sakara=Excitement]

Reports Suggest Virginia's Athletic Commission Strangely Alters Fight Result Twice on Same*Night - Bloody Elbow

I wasn't there. I paid no attention to the event. I asked no one to email me anything. I asked for no one to evaluate the performance of any athletic commission official. Yet, this morning, my inbox was flooded with a story from Harrisonburg, Virginia where the notorious state commission once again proved themselves incapable of performing the responsibilities of their positions.

Rather than recounting something I didn't see, here's what Tim Chapman (Editor-in-Chief of James Madison University's "Daily Breeze") had to say about a Respect Is Earned (RIE) event in Harrisonburg, VA:

Jessie Riggleman of Harrisonburg easily bested Bryan Goldsby of Macon, Ga., through the first two rounds. Goldsby might have won the third round with a flurry of strikes. When Dave Holland and his crew handed in the scorecard it was announced that Goldsby won a split-decision. Everyone was pretty confused and all I could think of was the Beebe fight and how these judges are clearly incompetent.

Upon further review, one of the judges realized that he or she had written the wrong numbers for the fighters, meaning Jesse won the split decision. As the main event was about to start they asked Jesse to come back in the cage after the next two fighters had already entered. Then the ring announcers decided to hold off the announcement as fans chided the promoter for prolonging the main event.

After the main event, they brought Jesse and Bryan back into the cage and said that the state of Virginia had ruled the fight a draw. At this point, it was really hard not to laugh. Then Jonathan Price, the RIE promoter, told everyone that there was another change and Jesse had been awarded the win.

In the end they got it right, but it was quite unfair to both fighters to go through that circus.

This writer tries to unpack how this could've happened:

It is almost impossible to confuse these two fighters. First, I know that the judge had a bout sheet, the fighters’ gloves were taped with color appropriate tape for the corner they were fighting out of. But beyond that, the fighters were introduced prior to the fight, and to go from surreal to sublime, Riggleman is white and Goldsby is black.

I have not seen a Virginia judge’s card. But it should be safe to assume that the card would be laid out fairly simply. if I remember the Jersey cards I’ve seen, there is are basically two columns: Red Corner & Blue Corner. There are areas to fill in with the fighter name & a short description (trunk colors for example), round score and a reason for the score. If Virginia’s cards are set up similarly, the fighters’ names shouldn’t even be an issue. Just pay attention to the color taped around their gloves, and you don’t need to know who’s who. The scary thought behind this problem is, the judge had to own up to his mistake. He had to go to the commissioner and say “I screwed the pooch on that last fight.” Now that the lid is off the box, your left wondering, how often does this happen without being reported by the judge?

It gets better. A RIE rep weighs-in:

"After the Beau Baker fight, which was also the next and final fight of the night, we called Jessie Riggleman back into the cage to interview him. Than we get word from the commission that the official decision has been changed and it turns out the fight was a draw. So, we announce to the crowd that the fight is a draw and there a little more happy about because there hometown boy doesn't get a loss."


"So we start the interview in the cage about how the fight turned into a draw and within those five minutes we actually get another word from the athletic commission," Adams said. "that it turns out that Jessie Riggleman has won the fight. So, we make that announcement and the crowd goes crazy, they didn't know what quite is going on but their excited."

Adams summed up the chaotic end to his MMA event "They literally within a half hour time period; gave Bryan Goldsby the split decision, 20 minutes later they changed it to a draw, and then 5-10 minutes after that they turned around and gave the win to Jessie. I've never seen anything like that before."

"Let me be very clear that neither corner is upset with the other fighter and corner." Adams said. "It's just they are both extremely upset with the athletic commission and judges because once you give the official decision and they sign the cards its suppose to be official."

I'll keep up with the story as details pour in, but I want to make something clear: I never made any of this up. I hope it's finally obvious I wasn't trying to manufacture a storyline about Virginia's commission that never existed. The innocent were never tarred and feathered unfairly. The reality is when you're incompetent at your job and you perform it regularly, errors are going to appear. As they happen under the light of scrutiny, there's going to be blow black, particularly when the stakes are high.

We'll update this story as information is produced, but I hope efforts to document athletic commission wrongdoing - be it in Virginia or elsewhere - produces a culture within MMA to pushback against government incompetence. We need and rely upon members of state regulatory bodies to ensure fighter safety and administer the sport correctly. When they fail, innocents are hurt. So is the sport itself.

More to come.

[SickNasty]

Embarrassing.

[Y2JUBAE]

Pathetic...

I say, eliminate Judges all together. How? Easy, when a fight goes to decision, it's a draw. The end.

A decision means nothing. It's based off of the Judges' opinion. There are many times it appears one fighter wins, however the Judges' see it differently. SO, what does a decision really mean?

I think it would be a great incentive for fighters to actually finish a fight.

[beau420]

Originally Posted by Y2JUBAE

Pathetic...

I say, eliminate Judges all together. How? Easy, when a fight goes to decision, it's a draw. The end.

A decision means nothing. It's based off of the Judges' opinion. There are many times it appears one fighter wins, however the Judges' see it differently. SO, what does a decision really mean?

I think it would be a great incentive for fighters to actually finish a fight.

I donno, some decisions are pretty clear cut.....Sam Stout's last fight never got hurt, destroyed his last opponent...or Kalib Starnes fight with Quarry....Kalib doesn't deserve a draw for running. Then there would also be no negative effect of doing illegal things like groin kicks or eye pokes....no point deductions.

The commissioner should have checked the cards, confirmed with judges if there were any questions or problems....then told the announcer what to announce. The judges scorecards should be immediately be made public.

And most importantly, publish the judges names.....WTF? They aren't just people who happen to score the fight.....they are suppose to be judges who know what they are doing. The writer who wrote this article should have published their names and their previous judging records should also be made public.

In pro boxing fights when announcing the judges in the past 5-10 years they have also been showing their previous popular judicial decisions. Kind of like a small resume of their work. This should be done. I want to know if the judge has made decisions before and in what fights.

Now these judges are probably small time and may have never judged an event before, but make all the information public and tar and feather whoever is to blame.

[CJRockstar]

lol Virginia screws up a fight result... like we didn't expect this to happen again...

[evergleam]

That's just sad. Could you imagine what it would be like if that ever happened with the UFC??

[rivethead]

Originally Posted by Y2JUBAE

Pathetic...

I say, eliminate Judges all together. How? Easy, when a fight goes to decision, it's a draw. The end.

A decision means nothing. It's based off of the Judges' opinion. There are many times it appears one fighter wins, however the Judges' see it differently. SO, what does a decision really mean?

I think it would be a great incentive for fighters to actually finish a fight.

I actually don't hate that, although I'd refine it to say any split decisions are automatically a draw. As Beau pointed out, some decisions are very clear cut, and there are fighters who would simply work to nullify offense without mounting defense in order to collect a draw rather than a loss.

I'd also bring the yellow card from PRIDE FC to the states, and take it a step further...if you have a fighter who simply won't engage [Starnes is the best example] give the ref power to give them one warning and then disqualify them if it doesn't stop immediately.

rh

[CJRockstar]

Originally Posted by rivethead

I actually don't hate that, although I'd refine it to say any split decisions are automatically a draw. As Beau pointed out, some decisions are very clear cut, and there are fighters who would simply work to nullify offense without mounting defense in order to collect a draw rather than a loss.

I'd also bring the yellow card from PRIDE FC to the states, and take it a step further...if you have a fighter who simply won't engage [Starnes is the best example] give the ref power to give them one warning and then disqualify them if it doesn't stop immediately.

rh

Quite a few of us have mentioned the notion of having the yellow card brought in from PRIDE in the past. I will consistantly stand by this yellow card argument and in taking it further I would say guys that constantly try to just take somebody down over and over without mounting any offense what so ever should get the card too. Case in point, Diego Sanchez's prolific "If I can't punch you, I'll just hug your leg over and over" tactic against BJ Penn. Then guys like Clay Guida would be forced to learn how to do something other than impregnating guys legs. People try to defend him, but as you can CLEARLY see with other wrestling based fighters, YOU CAN BE A WRESTLER AND STILL WIN WITHOUT ATTEMPTING 4000 takedowns. I can't imagine what it's like when you win a match and the whole crowd is booing at you.