The Problem With MMA Today (Part 2 of 2)
Avoiding Fighting
Let’s look at this for a minute. You might say that it’s difficult for the judges to know whether he is really trying to win or he is just faking it. I don’t agree it’s so difficult and I’ll try to give some examples.
In a real exciting fight when a fighter takes the other to the ground he try to land punches and thus need some distance between them. But in many MMA fights the fighter is more preoccupied in holding his opponent down so he would not escape. That’s why you usually see the fighter on top gluing himself to the other fighter so he would not get up. One cannot do a whole lot of damage when he is hugging the other fighter. But it’s a good way of contolling him. So this is one good sign of someone who is going for the control rather than the finish.
As for a stand-up fight today judges usually score by counting punches that land, assuming that they cannot measure the force of the punch or how much it hurt the other fighter. Again, I don’t think it’s so difficult to know but one way for encouraging exciting fights is reward the aggressor. In a fight where one fighter always goes forward and the other always backing away or circling around he is obviously avoid fighting. It doesn’t matter if he landed more punches. As long as he can knock guys out this way I have no problem with this strategy, but if a fighter is backing away the entire fight he should get a warning for avoiding fighting, and if continued he should be declared the loser. A classic example of this style is Frankie Edgar who avoids fighting yet manages to land enough shots to win a decision. To try and finish the fight he must step in and fight but he doesn’t and that mean he doesn’t deserve to win.
Rest
A few other suggestions for improvements:
There are other reasons why a fight can be boring which don’t involve the motivation of fighters to win. One is fatigue. When one fighter is tired he would want to try and fight in a way that would save him some breath, hopefully regaining his power later. It’s quite a given these days that fighters should have great stamina and if they don’t they should be punished for that. I don’t understand that way of thinking.
The fans come to see a fight, not a running contest. The most important thing is that the fight would be exciting. Since exciting fights are so short every organization makes a lot of pre-fight and post-fight happenings like the the walk down to the ring, the preperation of the fighters, their introduction, the post fight interview etc. Without all theses the events could be very very short indeed, especially if fights would tend to end more with stoppages than with decisions as I’m suggesting here. So there is really no reason to try and make the already very short fights even shorter. On the contrary I think that finding ways to make them last longer is better, assuming the suspense of the fight still lingers.
Today’s 1 minute break between rounds is really short, and don’t let fighters who are not in top shape enough time to recuperate. By giving fighters the chance to rest more they can both fight better and more excitingly. Since, like I said, fights are very short as it is, I don’t think the fans would be so bored by a few more mintes of rest for the fighters in between rounds.
Rest Breaks
Another thing is the famous annoying problem that if a fighter is caught with a flurry of punches or a submission at the middle of the round he will probably lose, but if he is caught with exactly the same thing at the last seconds of the round the referee will stop it at the end of the round and the fighter who was on the verge of losing would go to his corner to rest, and the fight will continue. Obviously that’s extremely without sense. I don’t understand what is the big significance of the 5 minute mark so that every fight must be bound by it.
The break between rounds should be applied sensibly, when there is nothing particular going on. For this to happen you need of course the involvement of the human factor.
The same thing goes for rest. There is no reason to stop the fight after 5 minutes for a break if both the fighters can still keep going, just as there is no reason to drag the fight for 5 full minutes when both fighters are exhausted. The human factor must decide, therefore, when a break of the fight for rest should be applied.
Combining these two ideas together what it actually means is that people outside the ring (not the referee who should focus on protecting the fighters’ well-being) should look at the fight, see if one or both fighters seem too tired to fight, and then, when there is a natural break in the action, they should declare a rest break. I think it’s only natural that these people would be the judges, but they can also be other people, whose specific job it is to do just this.
No. of Judges
For the reason of forcing the fight to end with a win, apart from the must-win scoring system, there are also 3 judges, so that there cannot be an equal number of judges voting for each fighter. Since, like I said, I’m not against draws. On the contrary I think they would benefit the sport, I also think the uneven number of judges should be abandoned. There is no reason why there wouldn’t be a judge for each side of the cage. 6 for a hectagon, 8 for an octagon. If you think that’s too much than half of these can be uses (which would mean 3 for a hectagon, I know). The point is that the number of judges should be in accordance with the ring or have some other significance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would say that when trying to find the solutions for problems, it should be remembered that fights should be made to be more about fighting than about controlling, and every rule change should try and reflect that. The spirit of decisions as they are today is strange for NHB, where the uncompromised finish is the goal. If decisions are used they should reflect aggressiveness and effort for finish, not controlling a fighter or small meaningless punches. It seems that some rules were conceived with the idea that we should approach fights in a scientific way. In science scientists are encouraged to ignore their intuition and rely only on numerical data. So rounds are exactly 5 minutes with no compromise and judges are encouraged to count punches instead of be effected by their impression of how much they hurt, assuming one cannot know how much a punch hurt someone. But judging fights is not an exact science and impressions are everything in a fight without a stoppage. And so the human factor must be given much more room in judging during the fight, and in other rules as well. The aggressive fighter should be rewarded, rest breaks should be given when the fighters are visibly tired and for longer periods of time etc.
I feel there is really no attempt in MMA today to try and change things. there is criticism but it it swept under the carpet by directing it at the "ignorant" fans, the fighters or the judges. the real change should come from up, the organizers, and since I think it would benefit their business I don't understand why they oppose it. I guess they are so afraid of change that they'd rather keep it the way it is now than risk it. that's too bad. I hope that articles like this would make more people speak out and propogate a change which evetually would reach the upper echelons of the community and manifest.
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