UFC 104: I Thought Rua Won, But After Watching Three Times I'm With The Judges!

I am a Lyoto Machida fan, and a Shogun Rua fan. At first, at the end of the fight, I was upset not seeing Rua win because I was convinced he had it. I was thinking "cool now Anderson Silva can challenge for the title and potentially be the first fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two weight classes". Then after reading through a few of my favorite MMA sites, I read an article with a quote from Lyoto saying watch the fight without the audio, and something about bias commentating. So I did just that, only I took it a step further and scored the fight myself. Now because the judging system is not really set, I set up a system of my own, and I provided a legend to show how I scored the fight.

Scoring legend

Kicks: (head) 10pts (body) 5pts (leg) 2pts [scored kicks by likeliness to land]

Punches: (strong) 10pts (weak) 5pts [scored punches by strength]

Knee: (powerful) 10pts (average) 5pts [Knees always hurts but there is a difference]

Elbow: 10pts [major commitment move, risky, and they all hurt so scored elbows as 10]

Grappling: (initial control, or clinch) 2pts (successful take down) 10pts [Inserts "striking in clinch, or while grappling" scored the same as stated above]

Defense: (practical) 2pts (defense of takedown) 5pts  [Practical defense covers blocks, avoiding attack without blocking]

Ground game: (Submission attempt) 5pts (submission defense) 2pts [did not get used]

Over all Round aggressor: 10pts [bonus to the most aggressive by end of each round]

I watched the fight three times first time during the pay per view, and the second time without audio, which is when I scored, and the third time with audio double checking my scoring and taking into consideration what the commentators were saying, and I must say that commentators were definitely making it seemed worse than it was. I noticed a lot of attempts that were blocked by Machida they were commentating on negatively, which I gave him points for defense, they were definitely a little biased, but not over biased.

I gave Round One to Machida with a score of 157 to 94.

Round Two went to Rua with a score of 106 to 91.

Round Three went to Machida with a score of 114 to 65.

Round Four went to Machida with a score of 65 to 48.

And the final round went to Rua 82 to 40.

In my opinion after watching the fight three times and scoring it myself, I give the decision to Machida three rounds to two, outscoring Rua with a point total of 467 to 395.

It was a very close fight. I will admit that there were a lot of times I paused, and then re-watched to see if kicks and punches were landing, or if kicks and punches were blocked, but in the end that’s what I came out with.

Lyoto definitely got his behind kicked, and had there been another round, or two, Rua probably would have finished him because he still looked fresh at the end of the fight.

In the end, when the decision is up to the judges and the fight comes down to points, I can now see why the judges scored the fight the way they did. Machida may not have done the most damage, but he scored the most points defensively, and offensively.

I still think Rua deserves an instant rematch because the decision is so debatable; this is why athletic commissions need to come up with a clear cut way to score MMA fights that everyone is aware of.