Former UFC light-heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida (16-2) has suffered his first two professional losses the last couple of times he’s been in the octagon. He was knocked out in his rematch with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 113 and lost a controversial split decision to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at UFC 123
In Machida’s bout against Jackson, many including his opponent, thought that he had won the fight when it came time to raise the victors hand, but two of the judges scored it otherwise. Many felt that the judges who saw it in favor of “Rampage” scored the bout for him because of his aggressive approach, despite landing the fewer number of significant strikes.
Machida recently spoke to Tatame.com about the fight and whether he’d look at changing his approach for his next bout, and whether he agreed with the current scoring system used in mixed martial arts.
“It’s hard to say… People sometimes want something and it’s not always possible. St. Pierre plays by the rules all the time because he knows that, once you’re losing, nobody wants to know about you anymore. It’s great to do a great show, but you can’t do both sometimes. Sometimes you only have two chances of beating that opponent, so it’s best to keep a strategic fight and try to win because the level of the sport is so high. The other guy ain’t silly, he’s also trained. I can’t say “ok, let’s begin to exchange and see where it goes”. We want to give fight and give people a good show, but you have to play on a safety zone. Anderson Silva himself, in some of the fights he’s been doing, he does it to win, because he knows the consequences of the losses. We’re not playing an amateur sport.
On their criteria it can be a bad thing for me, but in any other fighting sport, whether it’s Boxing or Muay Thai, there’s no such thing. The guy that attacks and the one that counter attacks have their credits, their shots. Where is there any good on walking forwards for five minutes and being hit 20 times? Only because you moved forwards it doesn’t mean you were effective. Sometimes it’s the wrong criteria to be used.”