People are still talking about the fights last weekend, so I figure I’ll throw in my two cents.
I watched the final three fights of UFC Australia. I thought Ian McCall was robbed personally in his fight against Demetrious Johnson. Just like I thought Benson Henderson clearly dominated Frankie Edgar, once again I figured it was a pretty clear-cut win for McCall. I really didn’t think it was that close, so I was shocked at the decision.
Sometimes when a fight is really close, you’re on the edge of your seat wondering what the judges are going to say. But in this case, I was just expecting them to announce McCall’s name, so I was stunned when they said Johnson had won.
Of course, then we learned the commission made a mistake with the scoring and instead it was a draw and we’re going to see them fight again.
Mistakes happen. I know this all too well. I personally did something very similar. A while back I was a guest judge for an amateur boxing match, which was just for fun and for charity. At the end of the bout the official comes by really quickly as you try to tally your scores. Well I wrote the right score for the third round but wrote it for the wrong person. So when they announced who won, it was a mistake because I screwed up.
In my case, they didn’t change anything because it wasn’t really that important. The guys fighting weren’t pro fighters or anything like that. What they did is they took normal people off the street and trained them for a couple months and set up these charity matches. It was a smart idea and it was an entertaining. But they got me to be a guest judge and I messed up a score. It’s as simple as that, but in the big picture it was really minor.
Another example was my fight in the MFC against Solomon Hutcherson. We went the distance and I was pretty sure I was going to get the win, but then they announced it as a draw. I was scratching my head at first but shortly after they realized there was a scoring mistake and I had in fact won.
Lucky for me it was caught right then and there and because I was in the main event, they were able to correct it immediately. I don’t know how quickly they caught the mistake in the Johnson-McCall bout but they didn’t address it until later.
It happens, especially when the judges are under the gun. I’m not saying that it’s acceptable, but it’s not something that happens super frequently. I get how impactful it is on the fighters and their careers, but the commission owned up to it and we’ll move on.
Now how about my buddy Martin Kampmann’s fight against Thiago Alves? I thought Martin had a brilliant first round, so I was excited. The next two rounds were not so good, and he got beat up pretty soundly. But in MMA one mistake can cost you, and that’s what happened with Alves. He probably should have kept punching, but instead he dove in for a takedown and got caught in a submission. I loved it though. My buddy won and people always love a comeback.
It’s always tough to say at the end of a fight what Alves was thinking. He might have done that instinctively, but being a Muay Thai fighter, I would think his instinct would have been to go for the kill and finish him off. So he was probably tired, and after rocking Martin maybe he thought he’d take him down and ride out the rest of the round. That’s pure speculation on my part though.
Martin is kind of the guy flying under the radar right now. He’s been beating guys up. In my opinion he beat Sanchez, and he came very, very close to beating Jake Shields. Carlos Condit is the interim champion, but if you look at Martin’s past six fights, who has fought better guys? An argument can be made that Martin could be a fight away from fighting for that interim title.
State of women’s MMA
I enjoyed both women’s fights on Saturday’s Strikeforce show. Sarah Kaufman’s fight with Alexis Davis was fight of the night for me. It was a hard-fought victory for Sarah and she’s certainly deserving of the shot at the title. And then the main event was very entertaining.
But you’re still dealing with a very small number of women that can fight at that level. The UFC and Strikeforce are full of hundreds of high-level male fighters, but only a handful of female fighters that can put on that calibre of a show. I’m not saying there aren’t more good female fighters in the world, but only so many are signed by Strikeforce.
Back to the main event, you could tell there was no love lost between Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate, and Rousey is a serious bad-ass on the ground.
There were some people saying the referee should have stepped in earlier to end the fight, but I don’t know, Tate wasn’t tapping, she wasn’t screaming in pain, as a fighter your job is to keep going until she taps out.
That being said, while she had that armbar, I was sitting on the couch screaming, saying please tap. Just tap. But I’m not feeling what Tate’s feeling, so she might have felt at first that she was okay. I know I’ve been in similar situations where it probably looked worse to people watching than what I was feeling and I knew I could work my way out. For example I was caught in a bad spot in my fight against Joe Doerksen at UFC 83 in Montreal, but I knew I can get out of submissions like the one he had me in if I just stay calm, and do what I’m supposed to do.
I don’t see anything wrong with how it finished, and it came out that Tate has no broken bones in her arm. Either way, Rousey could have been a little more humble in victory, but that’s her MO, that’s the way she is. Even Nick and Nate Diaz squash any bad blood with other fighters after their fights and act more graciously than Rousey did, but whatever, she’s happy being that person.
Going back to the Henderson-Edgar fight, we now know we’re getting a rematch. I think Henderson won the fight pretty easily and I don’t think there needs to be a rematch. I also would think that Henderson would want to move on, but that’s what the UFC wanted to do. And you can’t say it’s not going to be an exciting fight to watch. Don’t know if it’s a win-win, but it should be entertaining.