UFC ON FUEL 8 PICKS AND DISCUSSION

The UFC is back to Japan for the 2nd time!  Or, at least the second time in the modern era.

Here's your schedule of when to tune in:

Prelims on Facebook/Youtube:  Hard to tell!  UFC.com says 7:40PM ET but perhaps they will start earlier. Be careful and watch out for an earlier start!!

Main Card on Fuel: 10PM ET.

Get your picks in and enjoy your UFC fix.

There were four American judges (Ben Cartlidge, Barry Foley, Charlie Keech and Chris Watts) and one Japanese (Junichiro Kamijo) working the event with each of them judging at least 4 fights this time. Last time (UFC 144) it was similarly Kamijo and 4 Americans.

* Edited at 03.03.2013, 9:39 PM ET *

Still thinking about this card, the last two fights made this so memorable for me. The post fight presser was hard to watch with no dana, no translator and listening to wandi slowly **** english out of his ass/mouth is unwatchable imo and i bet that is why dana sent in that other dude to hold the conference. But what a free card with the fight of the year for sure.

@trevpicks, I think Dana's disease has made him realize he has to slow down a bit and can't be everywhere at once anymore ...

That's why they hired that dude to manage European stuff and he's probably going to start missing a few more of the smaller "other side of the world" cards ...

@dielegende23, if the UFC sent their own judges to their events it would open a ****-storm of questions since the UFC are invested more in some fighters rather than others.

For instance, say Ronda Rousey had beat Liz Carmouche via controversial decision and the judges were in-house ones. People wouldn't watch a UFC fight ever again.

I think that bad judging is better than suspect judging. You can educate judges so that they make less mistakes (though you can't eliminate them completely), but once people start thinking that the judging is influenced by a fighter's value and marketability for the UFC you'd lose legitimacy. I know that I'd definitely stop watching a promotion where the outcome of fights is decided by an interested party. I hate bad decisions, but I can swallow them. Suspect judging, not so much.

* Edited at 03.04.2013, 8:37 AM ET *

Isn't judging what killed boxing?  People finally woke up to the obvious reality that many boxing bouts were fixed for the mob to reap bonanza windfalls.  

MMA can't afford to come within light-years of anything like that.  And so far, we haven't.  We just have judges who suck at MMA events due to lack of familiarity.  

judging/refereeing problems won't go away, never. Even today, in sports as mature as baseball and soccer controversial desicions take place every weekend in almost every game. It may get slightly better, and I think it will, slowly. But in 20 years from know we'll still be complaining about decisions and going back to our good ol 'never leave it the hands of the judges'.