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[Sakara=Excitement]

After UFC 123 It's Obvious the 10 Point Must System Doesn't Work for MMA - Bloody Elbow

Quinton Jackson knew he wasn't the better man at tonight's UFC 123 bout with Lyoto Machida.

After the fight Rampage immediately raised Machida's arm, then after the decision told announcer Joe Rogan that "Machida whipped my ass tonight. Even though I don't want to, I think an immediate rematch would be the fair thing."

But it's not the kind of decision where you can really pillory the judges for blowing the call. The problem is the round by round 10 point must scoring system, not necessarily the judging. It would have been perfectly reasonable to give Jackson the first two rounds 10-9 each. Both rounds were extremely close.

The problem is the third round was definitive with Machida scoring a knock down on the feet and utterly dominating on the ground with mounted position and a tight arm bar attempt.

The 10 point must system wasn't handed down by the gods. It was grafted onto MMA in the late 1990s by regulators familiar with boxing. Japan's Pride Fighting Championships used a very simple "pick a winner" scoring system that many still feel is more true to the essence of the sport. After all the point of MMA is to see who would win the fight, not who can best game the system and score more points.

Admittedly the Pride system is very open to abuse and offers even less insight to the thinking of the judges than the 10 point must system.

I'm open to a complete rethink of MMA scoring. Why not a 20 point system with most definitive rounds being scored 20-15 but close rounds being scored 20-19 or 20-18. That way Jackson could've been given the first two rounds 20-19 and lost the third 15-20 and then we'd have the rightful winner with his hand raised at the end of the night.

What do you think?

[Doom]

I see where you are coming from, I dont know if they would ever do something along those lines or how effective it would actually be... I'm sure there would be more room for controversy... but yeah Machida won that fight and there is def. some flaws in the scoring system... but what can we do :/

[Malice]

29-28 Rampage is what I think

[KillahKimbo]

I dont think it will ever be changed, along with the downward elbow rule. If fights were longer there would be less bs decisions. Didnt 5 round non title fights get approved?

[v3xi]

More like UFC 104: Machida vs Shogun 1: the 10 point must system doesn't work. Close fight guys. Rampage barely won the first 2 rounds, doesn't matter if he raised Machida's arm or not. Idiots on this board calling this a robbery in a close fight are a joke. Look at this faulty uproar, I think people are upset that they lost money betting on Machida.

[Malice]

Originally Posted by v3xi

More like UFC 104: Machida vs Shogun I the 10 point must system doesn't work. Close fight guys. Rampage barely won the first 2 rounds, doesn't matter if he raised Machida's arm or not. Idiots on this board calling this a robbery in a close fight are a joke. Look at this faulty uproar, I think people are upset that they lost money betting on Machida.

+1 it doesn't matter if Rampage thinks he lost, he won.

[TapOut27]

There was not a knockdown in that fight. And it was a fine score of 29-28 rampage.

[Sakara=Excitement]

Originally Posted by TapOut27

There was not a knockdown in that fight.

[Goremire]

I must be crazy, because I didn't think the judges 'blew it' at all, and think that the 'rightful winner' was in fact Rampage.

While I do agree that the 10-point-must system was selected arbitrarily in the beginning, and has maybe outlived its usefullness for MMA, I think some serious analysis must be done when choosing its successor.

Does anyone here want to hazard a guess as to how often the 10-point-must system delivers the 'right' result? 80% of the time? 90%? Thoughts?

The reason I ask that is the danger when discussing this issue on the back of a contentious decision is that you can start trying to tailor your hypothetical judging system to address the result of that particular fight. However, one must be wary of the 'ripple effect' - changing the judging system for one fight where you disagree with the outcome could in fact alter the decision of other close fights that you actually agreed with.

One of the fundamental issues with any judging system is that it is subjective, assessed in real time and subject to human frailty. This automatically means that 100% accuracy is a guaranteed impossibility.

So, no matter what judging system is in place you will continue to have contentious decisions, and outraged fans as a result. That should be kept in mind before throwing the 10-point-baby out with the bathwater - let's make sure that whatever system replaces it has been assessed against a large body of existing fights and is heavily tested to see what results it will actually deliver.

[moonrocker]

I think the 10 point system messed the Harris/Falcao fight more than it did the Rampage/Machida fight.

Either the 10 point system goes and be replaced by "pick a winner" judging..... or move to 5 round fights.