Scoring system and refs

After some of these decision it makes you wonder what judges are really scoring on?

In my opinion i think octagon control(takedowns or defending takedown),trying to finish the fight, and effective grappling and striking should be the main citeria. what do you guys think?
Bisping vs Hamill

and now Diego vs Kampmann got me wondering

i agree with the criteria though i believe the fight mightve had a differennt result if the judgess had taken into account all the TDs that kampmann stuffed.

yea i agree, plus we gotta take into account some judges are fans of certain fighters and theres always some biased decisions

I think we see more bias from the fans than the judges. We hear so many fans cry robbery every time there is a close fight. Once in a while they are just some bad calls but more often than not it's just fans of a fighter getting emotional. You can change the criteria to whatever you want there will always be human error. It's not like Judges keep point totals, they just watch and then give one the round to one fighter or another. Fans also judge fighters not the fight. If an underdog looks good he often gets more credit just for getting in a punch. People tend to be more hard on heavy favorites as well and judge them harshly when they don't win as big as they should.  Also a lot of fans take style into account, you shouldn't look at a fight wrestler vs striker, it's MMA fighter vs MMA fighter. One fighter is attacking with TDs the other is defending and if you are on the defensive the whole fight you are losing. You have to defend and offer an attack of your own. Just like blocking or dodging punches isn't enough you have to throw some of your own. 

When scoring Focus on Offense forget about defense - Strikes, TDs, Sub Attempts, Sweeps, Passing Position, Agression, Controling the Center and Dominate Position

The Biggest thing up for Debate right now is if they add Damage as a Criteria. It sounds like a Good Idea but again how do you equate damage. Is Damage concussive damage or superficial damage like cuts. It also begs the question what about submission attempts and slams are they viewed as damaging because they often hurt and are damaging but don't cause any visible damage. There are a whole series of other problems additions like this cause. 

I thought the judges were just bad that night to be honest.  The scores for the Mizugaki fight were like 30 - 27, 27 - 30, and 29 - 28.  That's a pretty inconsistent split decision.  Maybe it was a close fight, but still.

Defending a takedown should count for just as much as a takedown in my opinion because a takedown shouldn't even be worth all that much either if it doesn't lead to anything. 
For example..  Sanchez's one takedown led to him struggling to hold onto Kampmann for maybe 10 seconds while Kampmann got back to his feet.  Aside from that Sanchez's attempts throughout the fight to bring the fight to where he wanted it were just Kampmann being successful at keeping the fight where he wanted it.  The judges should see it that way, but they just see it as Sanchez being aggressive.

Another problem is that judges need monitors.  They can't see **** from where they are.  They probably have trouble telling which strikes are even landing.  It's even worse when the fighters hit the mat.

I think there just needs to be a whole new batch of well trained judges as well as a change to the judging criteria which has been in place since pretty much the beginning.  MMA has evolved a lot, so should the rules/judging criteria.  Even the NHL has been changing up it's rules a lot over the last decade as hockey has evolved.

I think they score control of the octagon above everything. They say that's not the case but if you watch the fight again and judge like that you'll see what they did.

About Judges and Monitors. Judges should not use monitors because it lets a promoter dictate what is in view of the judges. Also of course not all shows have camera equipment meaning Judges can't rely on monitors being there all the time. They learn to judge a fight without them and that shouldn't change because a company has a high production level. The idea of the judges having no monitor and being placed in different areas is that no two judges see the same angle. Yes from some angles it looks like a shot lands when it didn't land clean, but that's what makes throwing punches so important. It also means if you are going to defend that dodging is the better option. Even watching on regular speed on tv things look like they land that don't. It isn't until they slow it down and show it from 3 angles that it wasn't as effective as we thought. Rd 1 of Hughes vs Serra, people gave Serra the first round because of a knockdown, but it watching the replay it was a headbutt that put Hughes down. But judges can't re-watch things in slow motion multi angle replay. If they did that it would take an hour to offer a decision of a fight. 

Again good points BigJ. Is that what the UFC does, the three judges at different spots?  

@Elkisland - Yeah I agree with that.  Makes Garcia's decision wins make a little more sense.

by the way i meant to say scoring system and judges lol

I think the problem is NONE of the judges train MMA, so therefore they have NO IDEA what to look for with grappling, striking, finishing, and so on and so forth...

With the amount of judging these guys do I can't believe for one second that these judges don't know what to look for. Most of these guys have probably judged more fights than the average MMA fan has seen. If you can't learn whats going on in the sport by then they have a learning deficiency. Most probably don't train but that isn't necessary to be a judge.