UFC In Need Of Fresh Judges

As we all know at “UFC 103: Machida Vs Shogun”, there was major controversy as the UFC judges scored in favour of Machida.

Now no-more than a month later, at “UFC 104: Couture Vs Vera” the judges have seemed to fail its fighters and fans yet again, by ruling in favour of Couture.

If the fight was a 5 round fight, Couture would have without a doubt won the fight via TKO. Brandon was totally exhausted by the end of the third round, he couldn’t even stand. But that being said, apart from perhaps “octagon control” which randy did do, there was nothing substantially convincing that Randy was indeed winning the fight. What Randy doesn’t seem to realise that in a three round fight, most fighters are capable of working to the end of the third round. In my view that game plan doesn’t work particularly well in non-championship bouts.

Vera landed much more clean blows to the face and body. Randy had been rocked twice, once in the opening of the first round, and the second, in the mid-way point of the second round.

Randy’s dirty boxing was ineffective as Vera’s gas tank was not depleted, and Vera stuffed all but one takedown attempts, as Vera tried to counter for a takedown of his own. Vera was able to climb out of Couture’s full mount and hold him in the clinch, and wait for the Referee to break them up (which happened about 5 times in the bout).

Vera was able to achieve a takedown of his own, and work some ground and pound before Randy was able to get back to his feet and once again, be stood hugging Vera.

Even though Vera was clearly exhausted, he was exhausted by trying to wrestle Randy off him, rather than taking brutal punishment. Randy’s body certainly received a substantial amount of punishment from the body kicks delivered by Vera.

I thought that Vera should have won 87-84, via Unanimous decision (29-28 of each round) maybe one round to Couture, but definitely not all 3.

The UFC are now facing the danger of accusations of having fights “fixed” when biased decisions are made by judges. This will lead to big names like Couture being demoralised which will affect the UFC brand resulting in loss of fans and profit.

UFC need to be extremely careful in its next big upcoming events, because decisions such as these will only be tolerated for so long, before fans lose interest and UFC will lose some of its most elite and prestige fighters.

Ryan Wilson

{This article is based upon expressing ones opinion only and isn’t intended to be offensive or derogatory in any shape or form.}