UFC President Dana White is again irritated by the MMA judgment after watching Jan Blachowicz vs. Israel Adesanya at UFC 259.
This time, it’s about the margins by which the judges are giving victory. A pair of 10-8 results in the fifth round gave Blachowicz a 49-45 score over Adesanya, making a dominant victory even more dominant when the light heavyweight performance did not necessarily justify it, according to the UFC executive.
“The score was insane,” White said at the post-event press conference on Saturday in Las Vegas. “These guys are doing 10-8 rounds like f * cking … there were two rounds in that fight that they did 10-8. When I got into the fighting business, a 10-8 sucked. You had your ass whipped. You did nothing in that round and were defeated if it was a 10-8.
“This 10-8 sh * t’s is out of control now. So, hopefully, we can fix that. They’re going to get in the way of a lot of fights, they’re giving out 10-8s like that. There was no 10-8 in that fight. “
Asked if the UFC would act by refusing to allow certain judges, White stopped making any threats.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “I just think that for some reason, all of a sudden, these guys are scoring 10-8s in rounds that are clearly not 10-8s. I mean, how do you deal with it? These are the criteria they are giving now. I think they are getting some bad advice. “
In fact, the criteria by which judges evaluate MMA fights have evolved considerably in the past decade. Much of this has been to educate the authorities on how to weigh the different types of action that take place in the cage. A measure of progress provided by various regulators is a score of 10-8, which is used when a fighter wins the assault by a “large margin”.
By the unified rules, the 10-8 margin is described as “absolutely essential for the evolution of the sport and justice for fighters” when used.
“A score of 10 – 8 does not require a fighter to dominate his opponent for 5 minutes of a round,” says the current judgment criterion. “The score of 10 – 8 is used by the judge when the judge sees verifiable actions by one of the fighters. Judges will ALWAYS score 10 – 8 when the judge establishes that a fighter dominated the action of the round, had the duration of the domination and also impacted his opponent with effective strokes or effective grappling maneuvers that diminished his opponent’s skills. “
In the fifth round of the fight for the light heavyweight title between Blachowicz and Adesanya, the action took a decisive turn in the middle of the road, when Blachowicz took the fight to the ground. In the rest of the frame, the light heavyweight champion hit blows from the first position and, in the final moments, reached the mounted position and rained heavy blows. This streak may have earned a 10-8 margin in the eyes of two judges, although the third disagreed with a score of 10-9, according to official scorecards.
In the wake of several controversial results at UFC 245, longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan declared the judges incompetent. Several veteran officials disagreed with his assessment and said that education and training remain a priority for active judges, many of whom meet regularly online to schedule fights and discuss how to apply the judgment criteria.
White, however, believes that judges continue to make mistakes. And although his comments rarely lead to changes in the group of MMA judges, he continues to defend his case, especially after an unusual result in a big fight.