Hey Scott,
Don't know if you'd be interested, but here's a little write up I did on my tiny blog - please feel free to share it on yours if you think it's interesting.
If not, that's cool too.
foeaminute
So I'm writing this after the semi-controversial Hendricks vs GSP UFC fight.
If you even understand the combination of words and acronyms in that last sentence, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you don't - here's the Cliff's Notes version: Johny Hendricks (that's the correct spelling) pretty much handed Georges St. Pierre (GSP, and also the correct spelling) his ass in a televised, pay-per-view fight on Saturday night for one of the handful of weight divided, UFC Championships. And no, I'm not going to explain what UFC stands for. Do some Goddamned googling for yourselves. And also, no, I'm not going to dwell on how "UFC Championship" is redundant. Anyway, the fight on Saturday staged the wonderful, sweet, handsome, intelligent, hairless, and supremely skilled defending champion of the UFC Welterweight Division, Georges St. Pierre, vs. the thuggish, one punchish, beardish challenger, Johny Hendricks.
Let's dummy this down for a second to something we all can relate to. Schoolyard fights. When you watched your friends in a fight in 5th grade, did you say to yourself, "Wow, George really had a slightly advantageous offensive position during a few seconds of the 2nd and 4th fifth of the fight, so he won, even though Johny made him make poopy and cry on the way home."?
You probably didn't, but that's kinda what happened tonight.
It's not a problem with Georges, who really is an impossibly great ambassador for a sport that should (and typically does) reward disgusting brutality. He's a smart, compassionate, knowledgeable guy. He's nearly impossible not to like, other than his accent. And even if you said "You have a stupid accent" RIGHT TO HIS FACE, I'm sure he would slap you on the back and say, "C'mon fella. I am not impress with your humourrr" - at worst. Or at least I'm banking on that. He has been scary, record-breakingly good during his tenure as (one of the) UFC Champion(s), but he still lost tonight.
The problem is: the judging. As has been a thorn in Boxing's side for the last...ever, UFC is finally starting to feel the heat of putting the decision in the judges' completely incapable hands. And it's not even the judges fault, per se. It's the issue of the rules in which they must score. Theoretically, in a UFC fight, a guy could literally just lay on top of another guy for the first three rounds (assuming it's a championship fight), and then get his eye removed, his nose blasted around the back of his head, and a fucking hole in his neck punched completely through during the last two rounds, and the judges would still have to judge his rotting corpse the winner over his Macarena-dancing, not very good current celebration dance having opponent. And this isn't a UFC specific problem, it's a Boxing problem, too - except Boxing is even more problematic and corrupt, because it's such a big business, and ...hey. It's not. UFC has finally reached Boxing levels of legitimacy!
So they say, "Don't leave it in the judges' hands". But shouldn't you be able to? Shouldn't you be able to trust a trained expert to see things in the favor of the person who did more right than the person who did more wrong? Isn't that the way justice wor...oh.
So, here are my possible solutions:
1) If you're gonna have judges, make them judge the fight as a whole.
2) Failing that, we have the fucking internet. Let us judge.
3) Failing that, just let the guys fight until they can't anymore and let them tell us who they think won at the end.
In fact, let's just go with 3. It shouldn't really matter to any of us more than it does them. And they know.
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