UFC President Dana White tells reporters that MMA judging “needs to be fixed”
At UFC 259 Jan Blachowicz defended his UFC light heavyweight title against reigning UFC middleweight king Israel Adesanya. Blachowicz ran out the winner on the scorecards thanks to his ability to out-wrestle and pin down Stylebender in the championship rounds.
The end result was a unanimous decision win for the Pole with two out of three judges awarding him a 10-8 for the fifth and final round. In his post-fight press conference UFC President Dana White went off on those scores.
#UFC259 Official Scorecard: @JanBlachowicz vs Israel Adesanya
All Tonight’s Scorecards: https://t.co/35sJ4plHsG pic.twitter.com/ZDeUVAyGPN
— UFC News (@UFCNews) March 7, 2021
“The scoring was insane,” White said (ht MMA Mania). “These guys are giving out 10-8 rounds like f**king … there were two rounds in that fight that they gave a 10-8.”
White is incorrect in saying two rounds were judged 10-8 in the main event. Two judges did score the same round a 10-8. Either way, White is clearly not a fan of more liberal uses of 10-8.
“Now when I came up in the fight business, a 10-8 round was an ass whupping,” he said. “You got your ass whupped. You didn’t do s**t in that round and got beat down if it was a 10-8. They gotta stop giving — this 10-8 s**t is out of control right now. So hopefully we can get this fixed. They’re going to be screwing up a lot of fights if they’re handing out 10-8s like that. There was no 10-8 in that fight.”
“I think we can all agree, and I’m not defending Israel Adesanya here – that fight wasn’t four to one,” White continued. “That’s bats**t nuts. If anyone watches that fight and thinks that fight is 4-1 you’re nuts. It was even going into the last round. And Israel was winning the first half of the round, then Jan took him down and won the fight in the second half of the round. The only thing that makes that fight 4-1 are ridiculous 10-8 rounds. Who in this room thinks the fight was 4-1, anybody? Tell me if you do. No? Not one person in here.”
People who watch fights every f**king weekend think that was 4-1. It’s a big problem right now with judging that needs to be fixed.”
Despite White’s insistence that judging needs to be fixed, the UFC’s head honcho seemingly remains against the idea of open scoring. Recently White has claimed open scoring would lead to bad/boring fights and fighters cruising for comfortable decisions. However, there is no evidence to support this. In fact, there’s actual evidence that the opposite is true.