Sudden Death

What are your thoughts on having a Sudden Death Round to Help prevent Draws? This would be were the refs call a draw and then declare Sudden Death meaning there would be one more Five minute round and that would determine the fight.

would be intersting to see, at least for championship fights.

I think it would be something hard to do because of the extra round thats 5 more mins in that ring swing for the fences.

I think that may be necessary because this draw is happening a little bit more often now. And the fact that it's happened in the main events twice this year now I feel almost robbed. Also I think that fitch should have won that fight

First off, it would be hard to get that legally allowed because of how commissions decide how many rounds a fight can go. Secondly, what if that "sudden death" round ends in another draw? Then do we keep having these rounds until someone is declared the victor? 

I agree, I think it would be hard to get by comissions intially. Maybe similar to football it'd be a shortened round, like only 3 minutes and if it's still a draw then it stays a draw. But one more round, I doubt there'd be a lot of draws if there was that extra round. Also, those rounds would be crazy exciting when they happened.

I understand it would be difficult to do such a thing but a draw doesnt really help any fighters. Immagine if fedor and silvas fight ended in a draw...that would really mess up the tournament and with having someone move up to fight the champ. if not a sudden death round then what would be better?

reminds me of the penn-uno fight that ended in a draw. that was before i watched mma but didnt it compltely screw up the LW division?

Kallousklown yes it did. They soon closed it down for a while after this fight becuse there was no LW champion and they didn't have that many people at that weight at the time. @MikeaWhitney your right that it would make sense especially for a tournament style like what strikeforce is doing now and how bellator runs it's whole operation. However, jm and jerry5 have a point this would b pretty hard to get past commissions but jerry5 you have a point make it a shorter round, plus I don't think that it would still allow a draw because most people would not be prepared for that 4th or 6th round even if it's only 3 minutes so we would see who wants it more for sure.

Actually, here in Massachusetts there used to be sudden death overtimes at certain events.  Not anymore now that the sport is regulated by the athletic commission.

And then TUF obviously they use a 3rd overtime round if it's even after 2.  It's not my favorite idea but it does have some good things about it.

they could even make it a shorter round even. 3 mins or 4mins

Did it help the fights in Massachusetts at all? I mean it may not be very exciting on the show sometimes but this is also because of the fact that they are fighting so soon back to back.

They need to initiate the Pride system!!! Rounds should be 10-5-5 and judge the fight in its entirety, rather than round by round....

not to be rude but sudden death rounds are a bad idea. I've actually cornered a training partner of mine who fought to a draw and was told to fight a sudden death rd, then  the sudden death rd ended in a draw. This extra round wasn't even talked about during fight negotiations, this was something he had no idea could happen. My friend ended up splitting the purse and spending the night in the hospital, no extra money for the extra round. Secondly being a fighter I know for sure that after you fight three rounds win or lose you go through an adrenaline dump once the bell sounds signaling the end of the fight. There is that feeling of "Its over, whats the result? I can finally relax." Place yourself in a situation where you have on your t-shirt and hat  gulping down water or a sports drink and the announcer tells you that you have to go back out there for one more round? Especially if you were thinking you won the fight. Would you be able to perform after going through that roller coaster of feelings?

@GutturalReef had a good point about PRIDE scoring system. The biggest problem leading to draws is the current point system. Simply put there is too much math. There are various opinions on how to fix this. 1. Getting rid of current round format and allow fighters to compete until a fighter is ko'd, subbed or the ref stops it like it was in the early days. (The Gracies contend that this is the way to judge a real fight as in a real fight you don't get a minute break to recoup) 2. Instead of scoring the round it is awarded to a fighter. For example, Frankie Edgar would have won against Gray Maynard even though he lost the first rd decisively because he won more rounds overall. It would eliminate the 10-9, 9-9, and 10-8 scores that often lead to draws. 3. Scoring the fight as a whole instead of round by round. The judges would wait till end of fight to submit scores based on certain criteria such as, damage inflicted, aggression ect. I've also heard about various officials trying to implement a half point system as well. Not sure what the big difference is between that and current points system.

In short no matter how many rounds they add or how well the judges are trained the sport will continue to have controversial draws under the current scoring system. That being said, a draw is much better than having a victory robbed from you. People are screaming that Fitch got robbed, and fightmetric would suggest the same. Those same people should look at the first Penn vs Edgar stats as well as Penn was totally screwed in the first fight according to the stats.

Yeah good point I am not for the idea I am just curious because there has to be some way to help make these fights have winners instead of Draws. What are your thoughts on that matter?

California will be testing the half point scoring system developed by Doc Hamiliton this year for amateur mma bouts. It contains more "emphasis on damage, striking and grappling.." sherdog also had a couple post written about it, it makes since as the boxing 10 point scoring must system just doesnt translate well to all the layers that mma brings in a fight. The amateur bouts will be scored both ways in order to compare data. This could be a big move towards standardizing a system specifically built for mma. 

i forgot to post the link for the article which i was referring to
http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/mma/columns/story?id=5875187

The half-point idea makes no sense to me at all.

Just change the definitions of 10-7, 10-8, and 10-9 rounds.

Even: 10-10
Slight edge: 10-9
Clear winner: 10-8
Domination: 10-7

It's easy to keep track of and does the same thing as the half point system.  Confusion by officials and fans will get completely out of hand with half-points.

Dave Meltzer at yahoo sports explains it a littler better in this quote:
"Under this system, if a fighter wins a round that’s difficult to call, it gets scored 10-9.5. When it’s clear that one fighter won the round, it’s 10-9. When a fighter dominates the round but doesn’t have his opponent in bad shape during the round, or if a fighter does major damage but the opponent gets a degree of offense in, that would be a 10-8.5. A 10-8 round or lower would be similar to how things are scored today.http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=dm-judging122609

This does well to give slight edges for damage or dominate postions that a normal 10-9 round wouldnt cover. So in this case id say Fitch would have won the fight with both the first and second rounds being ruled 10-9.5 (BJ still winning both rounds), because he was able to reverse position when penn had his back. Fitch would still have had the third round 10-8.

The purpose of the half point scoring I agree with.   I just don't think you need half points to actually achieve that purpose.

Just use 10-10, 10-9, 10-8, and 10-7.   To me it's the same thing except a lot easier to understand... for both officials and fans.

Thats a good point greg. Is that overall or per round?