UFC 126 Results: Jake Ellenberger-Carlos Rocha Highlights Judging Issues Again

Judging problems in mixed martial arts were underscored again at UFC 126 when Jake Ellenberger and Carlos Rocha fought to a split decision in their welterweight contest on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

While split decisions are nothing new in mixed martial arts, particularly in close fights without any real near-submissions or near-knockouts, things got very confusing when the official scores came from the judges.

The first judge scored the bout 30-27 for Rocha, while the other two judges both scored the fight 29-28 for Ellenberger, the victor by split decision.

This means that one judge scored all three rounds for Rocha while the other two judges scored two of those three rounds for Ellenberger.

How, exactly, could this happen?  How could one judge see the fight so clearly for one fighter while the other two scored the bout in favor of his opponent?

There are too many problems with mixed martial arts judging to even begin explaining, but one of the biggest problems is that mixed martial arts really doesn’t have a specific scoring system to determine the winner and loser of each fight.

While the rules state that a fight is judged by a given criteria which includes clean strikes, effective grappling, Octagon control and effective aggressiveness, it does not define how important each of those categories are.

With the 10-point-must system, every round is scored equally regardless of the damage inflicted, control displayed or aggressiveness shown in that round.

In addition, one judge may score a series of events completely differently than another. For example, “Fighter A” could land a flurry of 10 clean punches and kicks before being taken down by “Fighter B.”

One judge may score this in favor of Fighter A because he landed “clean strikes” while displaying “effective aggressiveness.”

Meanwhile, another judge may score this favorably for Fighter B because he also showed “effective aggressiveness” while also displaying “effective grappling.”

Still yet, a third judge may score the series of events equally for both fighters.

This quick example just shows the general flaw in mixed martial arts scoring. Without enough of an explanation given on how to score the fight, each judge is left up to his or her own interpretation of the rules—and, of course, these interpretations may be completely different from one another.

UFC commentator Joe Rogan addressed this issue in December.

"It puts a tremendous amount of pressure on fighters not knowing what kind of officiating you're getting," he said, according to MMAMania. "It's gross. You should be able to leave it in the hands of the judges. You should be able to just fight."

The bottom line is that Joe is dead-on. Judging in mixed martial arts needs to be fixed and fixed fast.

While I personally believe that the better man won the fight tonight when Ellenberger was awarded the decision, it’s not hard to see why bad decisions seem to happen so often in mixed martial arts.