Experiment could revolutionize MMA judging - UFC - Yahoo! Sports
"There are more complaints in mixed martial arts about judging – after nearly every fight card – than any other issue. The system is basically a hand-me-down from boxing’s 10-point must system, which works in bouts of eight, 10 or 12 rounds. But too often in a three-round MMA fight, a fighter, like Wiman, can inflict a great amount of punishment in winning a round, but lose the fight because he comes out on the wrong end of two coin-flip-close rounds, despite clearly doing more damage over the course of the bout.
It’s the inherent weakness of a system where almost every round is scored 10-9, no matter how close or how dominant it is. Virtually no rounds are scored 10-10, although judges are technically allowed to do so. Unless you dominate the round from start-to-finish and have your opponent just about finished, you are unlikely to get a 10-8 score.
Instead of always writing 10-9 on a scorecard unless there is a completely dominant round with a near finish, you have more options. A 10-9.5 is for a close round, like rounds one and three in Siver vs. Wiman, and rounds one and two in Jackson vs. Machida – both fights in which the person who ended up losing in the current system would most likely have won with the new system.
A 10-9 would be the score for a round that is competitive, but, you have no doubt who won. That is still the score that comes up most of the time with the new system. A 10-8.5 would be for a round where one fighter dominated, but didn’t do enough for a 10-8, notably round two in Wiman vs. Siver, and round three in Machida vs. Jackson.
A 10-8 would be similar to how it is currently used, and you’d even have a 10-7.5 for something more dominant than a normal 10-8 round, but for whatever reason, the fight isn’t stopped.
The new system also includes a fourth judge whose lone job is to award points based on criteria. If the three judges come out to a draw, which has happened six times so far this year, a winner is determined based on a points system.
The point system was put together by a panel that included well-known referees and judges “Big” John McCarthy, Herb Dean and Nelson “Doc” Hamilton, as well as Steele and George Dodd, the executive director of the California State Athletic Commission."
"Experiment could revolutionize MMA judging" 
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