With the many recent controversies in the world of combat sports, a couple of ideas have been thrown out to potentially improve mixed martial arts: Instant replay, and open scoring.
Guest bloggers Carlin Bardsley and Brad Taschuk debate the benefits/detriments of either and whether they should be used in MMA.
Cast your votes as to whose arguments you like better…
SHOULD INSTANT REPLAY BE USED IN MMA?
Bardsley: Let officials do their jobs
While on the surface instant replay for MMA could be construed as a good idea, in practice the only thing it will accomplish is to slow down one of the fastest sports in the world and make its officials complacent.
One of the things people love most about MMA is the breakneck pace and the speed with which the action can happen. The action happens incredibly quickly and the momentum can change at a pace that dwarfs other sports, which is part of the reason that it appeals to younger males who have been raised to have short attention spans.
Adding an instant replay component would slow the action down to a crawl and risk not only losing the interest of the live crowd, but the TV audience as well. Look at what happens when the NFL goes to the video booth. It’s a universal signal for a bathroom or kitchen break.
The other factor to consider when considering instant replay in MMA is the effect it will have on the people officiating it. Referees are entrusted with the safety of the participants in a very dangerous sport. Knowing in the back of their minds that they have a failsafe could compromise the safety of the athletes by causing them to back off on calls they would have ordinarily made by either consciously or subconsciously wondering what the call will look like on a replay.
Conversely, it could also enable the referees to act too quickly in some instances by knowing the decision could be reversed in an instant replay setting. Either scenario will have worse outcomes than simply entrusting a properly qualified official to do his job.
Taschuk: Replay should be used in limited situations
Instant replay in MMA should be considered but with some restrictions placed on its use during bouts.
For starters, MMA is a completely different sport than your typical stick and ball sport, which all come replete with frequent breaks in action. Sure, MMA has the one-minute break between rounds, but for those who watch more traditional sports, when have you ever seen an instant replay review completed in just a minute? It’s pretty rare.
With the cardiovascular aspect of MMA being such an integral part of its success, providing extended breaks to fighters between rounds to review any sort of call could tip the playing field unfairly in an individual’s direction. This is not the spirit of instant replay.
I think one of the few occasions where instant replay would benefit the sport is when a natural break in the action already occurs. In this case I’m primarily talking about fouls like groin shots, eye pokes and knees or kicks to the head of a downed opponent. If the referee has already deemed a foul to have occurred and action has stopped, that would be the only suitable time to actually review whether a foul took place or not, as there is enough time to do so. Instant replay could be used in these cases to aid in potential point deductions (or abstaining from such).
In a three-round fight, where a single point can make or break a decision, I believe this is the only responsible way to use instant replay in MMA. Any further encroachment into the action taking place in the ring or cage would take away from the viewing experience for the fans, but more importantly could seriously hamper the fighters as well.
POLL:
Whose case do you like better (should instant replay be used in MMA)?
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SHOULD THERE BE OPEN SCORING IN MMA?
Bardsley: Time for transparency
With judging controversies seemingly at an all-time high, there has been a renewed call for an “open scoring” system, whereby each judge’s score would be made available to the public at the end of each round. The time has come for this idea to be put into practice.
An open scoring system allows each fighter and his corner to know exactly where they stand in a fight and what they need to do to be victorious. While detractors may argue that it will encourage a fighter ahead on the cards to “coast” through the last round, the opposite is also true. The fighter behind on the cards knows with absolute certainty that he must up the ante in his performance or walk away with a decision loss.
It also puts more accountability on the judges. The chances of a judge trying to pull something shady or give a guy a “hometown decision” decreases greatly when their results are being given to the world in real-time. There will be extra onus on the judges to call the fight correctly or seek another line of employment.
Not knowing the actual score of a sporting event until it’s over is a ridiculous premise in any other sport, why should fighting be held to a different standard? After all, we live in an information age. Making the scoring system more transparent can only mean good things for everyone involved.
Taschuk: There’s no point
The idea of open scoring in MMA is an intriguing one at first glance, but given a little bit more thought I really don’t see any way in which the sport benefits by implementing it.
Yes, the main arguments in favour of it are that it would force fighters to go out in the final round looking for the finish and that it may help to make judges more accountable for their scorecards. To be quite blunt, I don’t see either happening.
Fighters who have been shut out over the opening rounds of the fight aren’t doing so because they want to lose; instead it is because their opponent is either better, or has a superior gameplan that nullifies their skills. Knowing that you’re down two rounds to none (as say, Leonard Garcia was against Matt Grice last weekend) doesn’t change the fact that Garcia couldn’t stop a takedown to save his life, and the third round was just going to be a repeat of the previous two.
As for other side of that equation, the judges won’t be held any more or less accountable based on this system. Look at the Pacquiao/Bradley decision over the weekend. That was universally regarded as a horrible decision, and Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Keith Kizer defended his judges with his usual lines of, “You could make the case…”, “You don’t know what the judges saw…” and other inanities. Once these judges have a position within the commission, it’s more difficult to get rid of them than a Canadian senate member.
Open scoring is a cure for nothing that is currently amiss in MMA, and if it wouldn’t change what the fighters or what the judges do, what’s the point?
POLL:
Whose case do you like better (should there be open scoring in MMA)?
$(“#poll_9876”).v2Poll({poll_id: 9876});
Carlin Bardsley is a writer for MMASucka.com and the host of a daily MMA radio show on NextSportStar.com.
Brad Taschuk is a freelance writer and blogger for tazmma.wordpress.com.
