UFC 291: Poirier vs. Gaethje 2

The official Tapology discussion thread for the event!

The thing is, most of the time, if your in a dominant position for a long time in a round, your going to win off damage anyway, only time you won’t is either the guy on bottom is doing real well, or you doing **** all on top and stalling the fight, and I’m happy to punish fighter for control stall, and reward fighter for doing well on bottom

If your in a dominant position and losing on damage, your not in a dominant position, your losing 

You're right, advancing position does count as I understand it, the question is how much? I don't know if judges are instructed in the details of how much to weigh a good punch to the face say compared to moving to a better position. It seems reasonable in a literal interpretation that if fighter A lands 5 good strikes on the feet and is then taken down by fighter B with 4 minutes on the clock who then proceeds to pass from full to half guard and land almost one or two weak punches throughout that would seem like a round you score for fighter A.

Doesn't often happen though with that long of a control time which is what I meant when I say judges don't really follow the rules to the letter most of the time.

Also keep in mind there's plenty of examples where there isn't any advance in position and no significant strikes landed. Take Ilir Latifi vs Tanner Boser. Mostly just layed on him, sat record for lowest strike count from a fighter in a 15 minute match I believe and got the nod from the judges in the end.

Reading through all this and I think that the problem is that the rules are a bit up to interpetation so different judges (sometimes even the same ones) give out different scorecards for fights that played out kinda similar. I distinctively remember the Usman vs Edwards 2 card in which throughout the whole night the judges seemed to favour control time even on the Aldo vs Merab fight in which Aldo clearly had done more damage but got controlled against the cage.Which I would have been fine with and kinda understand if it was consistent but then on the main Usman had decent control time in some rounds but lost them in the scorecards due to getting pieced up earlier and not doing damage himself when he controlled the position.I understand it's difficult since there are humans judging but I just want more consistency. 

You picked chiesa over Holland don’t speak about picks ever again🤣🤣

The reason for that, is because a lot of the time, the judges don’t follow the scoring criteria of MMA, and score control time over damage. Im at a point where I won’t get mad if judges factor in control, even tho they shouldn’t, just because it happen way to often 

MMA guru got mad at commentary, fan and fighters for not scoring with the criteria with they’re fan scorecard, when the worst problem  is judges don’t follow it a lot do the time, fix that problem

I agree I also hold that view. I even use it in betting sometimes if a fighter is a massive dog on the live line but all it would take for them to win is the judges ignoring the scoring criteria a little bit. It happens enough that you can certainly get equity with how crazy live lines get sometimes.

Certainly I think that judges can not use the excuse that it's difficult though if there's no advancement of positions on the ground and no effective striking. The thing is people will give them **** in that situation too because most casual viewers judge fights by "street rules" and are unaware of the scoring criteria, especially since commentators seem very sketchy at it themselves and will often contrast damage with control time as if those two factor in equally when they don't.

Remember how mad Dom got at Fitz when he said control doesn't matter? He was yelling at him "Who told you that!?" lmao

DC is often talking about "this guy did a lot of damage, he had him hurt but on the other hand this guy had a lot of control time so which way do you go?" and similar making it seem like he's completely unaware of the rules and think fights are judged holistically taking everything into account at once. Maybe it should be that way but the reason the rules were rewritten in 2017 to emphasize damage and effective grappling with the intent of finding a stoppage is that judges were just lazy/bad and awarded lay and pray wrestlers every time.

* Edited at 07.31.2023, 5:21 PM ET *