Not all 10-9 rounds are created equal, and therein is the problem in the scoring of Saturday’s controversial UFC welterweight championship bout between Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks.
Setting aside your own personal scorecards and perceptions of the fight, the outcome of this contest (and the crux of the drama that has followed) boils down to how rounds that look dramatically different can earn the same scores, and the need for more liberal use of scores other than the standard 10-9 offering round after round.
After all, how can a round where Hendricks puts St-Pierre on unsteady legs and opens him up with vicious ground-and-pound be as valuable as a frame where the champion has a clear edge in the striking department, but never puts the challenger in real jeopardy? Both were scored 10-9, but in watching them, most observers can see that Hendricks’s performance in the rounds he unanimously won (Rounds 2 and 4) had a greater impact on the fight than the frames St-Pierre was awarded on all three scorecards.
And that has to start being seen in the end results or else these situations are going to persist, which clearly isn’t a good thing for the sport.
Here’s what I’ve never understood about the application of the 10-point system in MMA as brought over from boxing: If we’re going to crib their method, why not use it the same way?
Boxing features more 10-8 and 10-7 rounds than MMA, and when stacked up over lengthy fights, the difference between the winner and loser is much more obvious in the scores. Given the condensed nature of MMA bouts, why not instruct and allow judges to be a little more liberal when it comes to handing out those same scores in MMA bouts?
In Saturday’s championship tilt, breaking away from the rigid “we’ve got to score everything except a completely one-sided drubbing 10-9” approach currently used by judges could have changed the outcome of the fight without altering who each judge saw winning the various rounds.
Even if you stick with the final round allotments that were turned in – 2-1 in favour of GSP in the first, Rounds 2 and 4 for Hendricks, and then Rounds 3 and 5 for St-Pierre – Hendricks could have still won the welterweight title had “his rounds” been scored 10-8, something that isn’t wholly impossible to accept given how different they looked from the 10-9 frames St-Pierre earned.
With a pair of 10-8 scores in those two rounds, Hendricks earns a 47-46 decision win, even though he dropped three rounds. As weird as that breakdown sounds – lose three of five frames, but still win the fight – it also feels like an oddly satisfying verdict for this controversial contest.
Not only would it change the final outcome of this fight, but it could have altered the way the final round was fought as well.
Despite splitting the first four rounds, Hendricks would have been up 38-36 heading into the final frame, which puts even more pressure on the champion to turn up his offence and try to finish the fight – or put together a 10-8 round of his own to level the score and retain his title.
Now, it would be even better if we had open scoring so both corners knew the state of affairs heading into the final frame, but that’s another mountain to climb. Still, if you know there is even a possibility that the judges scored any of those rounds 10-8, it will have an impact on the way you approach subsequent rounds – at least you would think that it would.
Moving beyond just this particular fight and looking at things in a broader sense, how could this not be a good thing for the sport?
Having gone through “Big” John McCarthy’s COMMAND course in the past (I passed, and am a certified judge as recognized by the Association of Boxing Commissions), I can tell you that we actually talked about rounds in terms of “dominant 10-9” rounds and “close 10-9” frames, and that seems to be all kinds of problematic right about now.
Those two “types” of 10-9 rounds still count the same – Fighter A can win two “close 10-9” rounds while losing a “dominant 10-9” in the third frame, and still win the fight. We’ve seen it plenty of times in the past, and we’re bound to see it again, probably before the year is out.
If we start handing out more 10-8 scores for those “dominant 10-9” frames, we eliminate some of those fights described above. Sure, there are more draws, but is there really anything wrong with that? I mean, we talk about how close some of these fights are all the time, so recognizing that in the scoring seems reasonable to me.
Saturday’s championship contest should serve as a starting point for meaningful discussion and efforts to improve the scoring in MMA right now, rather than being just another fight where we argue about how the rounds were scored instead of looking at the bigger picture.
And it can’t just be surface discussions either – as great as it is that the Nevada State Athletic Commission has a workshop set up for Dec. 2 to solicit input on regulation changes, it’s an exercise in futility if nothing comes of it.
Being more liberal with scores other than 10-9 is just one option, and now is the time to discuss all potential adjustments and changes, because the only unanimous decision to emerge from Saturday’s UFC 167 welterweight championship contest is that we need to fix the problems with scoring in MMA.