This Sport Needs a Scoreboard: The Case for Open Scoring in MMA

By Michael Ford

Judges’ scorecards shouldn’t be rendered in secret. By publishing round winners as rounds are scored, we can pinpoint EXACTLY when and where judges get it wrong. This transparency would be beneficial for the sport.

With what seems to be regular frequency, the existence of questionable judges’ decisions in MMA has caused much lamenting and gnashing of teeth in the hardcore MMA blogosphere. Commenters have tended to propose various remedies for this supposed crisis, which have ranged from various half-point schemes to wholesale overhauls in the manner that fights are scored. Such proposals, while well-intentioned, will not eliminate human error, nor will they correct for incompetent or uninformed judges applying these new standards. However, without underplaying the role that educating judges would to to normalize scoring, I think that a fairly simple, yet typically dismissed, manner of dealing with MMA judging needs to be fully addressed. In short, Open Scoring is a proposal whose time has come.

Many commenters and fans have reflexively dismissed the idea of Open Scoring, but if I may, I’d like to first explain how Open Scoring in MMA would work, as well as why most objections to such a system are misguided. Under the Ten-Point Must System, as announcers are often apt to intone, “a round winner gets 10 points, while the loser gets 9 or less.” (Well, the savvy fan knows that a Draw Round of 10-10 may be scored as well, a fact that is hardly ever promoted or highlighted.) In addition, each round is currently scored by three judges, whose scores are collected after each round, and whose names are read after the fight, when the decision is rendered.

Under an Open Scoring system, however, the judges and their scores are announced not after the fight is over, but after each round is over. No more uncertainty, no more doubt, no more awkward exchanges where the commentators vacillate between potential round winners, just three scores from three judges. From there, it’s all laid bare. Whatever they’ve scored lingers there for five minutes, and the commentators and fans alike are free to criticize the judges, and scrutinize their decisionmaking. If there is clear consensus about the score, then everyone is on the same page about who is winning/losing the fight, and the narrative shifts to how the fighter behind on the scorecards can reverse the trends to make up the deficit, or redouble efforts to finish the fight. If a fighter seeks to “run out the clock,” this strategy can be addressed head on with a degree of certainty, rather than in the noncommital way these things are often dealt with. And the urgency felt by a fighter trying to mount a comeback becomes more palpable.

The hallmarks of this system are immediacy and transparency. Bad calls happen in all sports, but only in combat sports like boxing and MMA does a bad call COMPLETELY invalidate the contest that everyone is watching. A referee in a football game can’t make a call in the fourth quarter that nullifies all the yardage and scoring from the previous three. A ninth inning call doesn’t turn a tie game into a blowout. Thus, even where an official’s decision is egregiously bad, the discussion is narrowed to the immediate effect of that bad call, and the competent sportsman is expected to have the poise and professionalism to overcome a missed or mistaken call. Thus, instead of promoting a cynical undercurrent of purported incompetence, screwjobs, and conspiracies to fix outcomes, all of which undermine the perceived legitimacy of the sport, the critiques focus on ironing out imperfection, and holding officials accountable for their lapses, judging the offense by the size and impact of the gaffe. Judgment calls are given deference, while objective determinations have seen themselves subject to a growing series of systems of review. MMA too could demand this kind of accounting from its judges and commissions, as fans and promotions could voice their issues with outlier judges in a measured and informed way. If multiple judges are miguided about a round, a Commission could issue a Clarifying Statement about standards for scoring, aimed to mute that criticism, and stave off controversy before it develops momentum.

Now admittedly, there are a few logistical hurdles to the implementation of this system, namely the wedding of mixed martial arts and boxing judges. The argument against using Open Scoring in boxing is that, over the course of a ten- or twelve-round fight, it encourages fighters to “take rounds off,” coasting through middle portions of fights, fighting with less urgency because a valid strategy might be to win the first few and last few rounds. In MMA, that is less probable, because over the course of a 3-round fight, there’s really no round to take off. Even winning the first 2 rounds by 10-9 scores doesn’t preclude an 8-10 loss in the 3rd, which you’d expect any fighter down 20-18 to shoot for…if not a finish. And a fight half as short as a boxing match doesn’t have time for extended inaction. So whatever the rationales for rejecting Open Scoring in boxing, they are inapplicable here. Regardless of whether commissions want to continue utilizing the same judges for boxing and mixed martial arts, they should be pushed on the MMA side towards a system that is fully transparent, and allows these judges’ expertise to be scrutinized openly.

The all-to-common saying is “don’t let the fight go to the judges,” which attempts to rationalize bad decisions under the notion that all judging is inherently suspect, and any fighter can avoid that by finishing the fight, or being finished. While this is true, it doesn’t obviate the need for competent judging, nor does it provide a moral basis for shifting the onus from athletic commissions, who are charged with regulating, adjudicating, and upholding the best interests of the sport, to fighters, who should be trying to win while competing safely and honorably. In fact, this rejoinder often sounds like a way to punish fighters for not finishing, by raising a cloud of scrutiny and suspicion over wins and losses. This is unfair to fighters, and unfair to the sport; if all of the relevant actors want to disfavor or disincentivize non-finishes, they should just eliminate judges’ decisions altogether, rather than render decisions in arbitrary and capricious ways. A win by decision, even if unpopular with finish-minded fans, should be as credible and as valid within the confines of the sport as a win by knockout or submission. And open scoring helps to legitimize that idea, by presenting scoring as something that happens all the time, not simply in fights that end without a finish. A fighter is winning or losing a fight UNTIL the fight is finished, but at times, the lay fan is led to believe that judges only determine winners or losers if a fight ends without a finish.

If MMA is to be viewed as something different from professional wrestling, or the worst parts of boxing, it needs to stop trying to build in false suspense. Sports is about immediacy, not retroactivity; it lives in the Now. While there is a place for replays and recaps, part of the appeal of watching a sport is coming to an understanding of what you are seeing, and being able to anticipate what comes next. Announcers and Production elements can bring you along, filling you in on details you might be missing, but only if they are more informed than you are. The end of a round shouldn’t be an occasion to insert drama where there is none. Commentators may not want to go out on a limb while a fight is going on, but Open Scoring allows them to, after each round, properly apply analysis to agree or disagree with the judges’ decisions, rather than wait until a fight is over to declare that “the wrong guy won,” like Jim Ross, decrying a nefarious “screwjob.”

This weekend, we are sure to have a few fights marred by controversial decisions. But ask yourself, would the bad taste in your mouth be as bitter if you knew, round by round, how the fight was taking shape in each judge’s eyes, and whether it comported with what you were seeing? Would you be going on vaguely about “robberies,” or would knowing which judges, in which round, saw the fight differently than you did focus your ire? Would you root harder for your favorite fighter to finish a fight if you knew, without a doubt, that he was behind on the scorecards, even if you disagreed with the scoring? An Open Scoring regime isn’t a panacea, but it certainly is one large step towards the credibility of sport, and away from the false drama and unpredictability of spectacle.