New Rules, Part One: Methods To Improve The Judging System In MMA

After all, rendering your opponent incapable of continuing the match, whether by knocking him out or making him submit, is basically the main goal of a fight and it should probably be a criterion that is scored separately from the others, if not as the most crucial one. But I digress.

The official criteria that the Nevada State Athletic Commission uses to rate each fighter's performance round-by-round are clean striking, effective grappling, octagon control, and effective aggressiveness.

For reference, the full scoring guidelines can be found here.

The criteria used for striking and grappling are pretty straightforward, such as landing clean, efficient strikes (accuracy) and heavy, effective strikes (power and damage).

For grappling, clean takedowns and reversals are scored evenly, and threatening with submission attempts is suppose to score points, contrary to the evidence that we have seen in some decisions.

Octagon control is basically self-explanatory, while aggressiveness is rated as the least significant factor. 

Aggressiveness is defined as moving forward and scoring but is clearly not synonymous with the attempt to finish the match since one can be aggressive, reckless and relatively inefficient while fighting for a decision victory (think Clay Guida) whereas another man can get several near-submissions and is clearly trying to end the bout with every move (think Matt Wiman).

The problem here is evaluating the criteria. The NSAC  rules stipulate that a sliding scale will be used to rate the criteria, and striking is weighed more heavily if 90% of a fight takes place on the feet (naturally enough) while grappling is weighed as greater if the majority of the fight takes place on the mat, though effective ground and pound is still counted when applicable.

I'm not quite sure how the judges make use of this "sliding scale," but my idea here is to give the winner of each criterion a score of 10 in every round. So whoever has the most effective striking gets ten points, whoever has better octagon control gets ten points, and so on for the four main criteria used in the evaluation.

Now, the most important criteria are striking and grappling, followed by octagon control, and then finally aggressiveness, according to the state athletic commissions. To weigh these criteria properly it is best to multiply point totals: x3 for the no.1 criterion, x2 for the no. 2 criterion and x1 for the no.3 criterion.

So whoever gets the better of grappling and striking gets thirty points for each, then twenty points for better octagon control and keep only ten points for aggressiveness, the least important criteria under current rules.

That way, by stating which fighter did better in each criterion during a round, one can come to a weighted point total which takes into to account the most important factors necessary to score an MMA match properly.

For a sample round, let’s say fighter A has superior striking and octagon control, so he gets fifty points: thirty from striking, the no.1 criterion, and twenty from octagon control, the second most important criterion.

His opponent, fighter B, would get forty points: thirty for better grappling, also the no.1 criterion, and ten for his effective aggressiveness, the third most significant factor.

So the competitor A would win the round, fifty points to forty. Of course, there is still an element of subjectivity and arbitration as one is still using the same qualitative criteria to determine who has superior striking and grappling, but at least quantifying point totals in this manner leads to greater clarification as to why a particular fighter took a certain round.

Two caveats are necessary though: if a negligent amount of grappling or striking occurs, for example, little to no takedown attempts or clinches, then octagon control and grappling should not be used to score a round and only striking and aggressiveness should count on the feet.

If the same thing occurs on the ground, like if there is little to no striking from the top or bottom position, then striking should not count as a criterion in that round and only the other three should be taken into account. 

This is in fact similar to the current rules, where I mentioned above that if 90% of a fight takes place on the feet then striking is weighed more heavily than grappling (the reverse is also true), and I don’t see anything wrong with this procedure.

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