As you probably already know Chris Lytle made some drastic changes in his fighting style after his first fight with Matt Serra in 2006. Until that time Lytle “fought to win.” Since then much has been made of his Fight of the Night oriented mentality, both positive and negative.
During his recent interview on The Savage Dog Show (1:54 in) Chris Lytle elaborated on a lot of relevant points concerning his fighting style going into UFC 119.
While I’ve always criticized Lytle for what appears to be a reckless propensity for haymakers and lack of strategy, he explains that his recent fighting style is the result of fear of losing a split decision based on the lack of consistent scoring by MMA judges.
He goes on to say that when he looks back at that fight and whether he feels he won, ‘it all depends on what he judges are looking at.’ He feels that while Serra controlled where the fight was happening, he landed more punches. The result was that two judges gave all three rounds to Serra and the other gave all three rounds to Lytle.
This really touches on the single biggest problem in MMA today. Not necessarily that the judges don’t know what they’re doing, but that the rules simply need more clarity.
So while many in the MMA media have criticized Dana White for giving fighters the advice “don’t leave it in the hands of the judges,” Lytle know fights in fear of doing just that. Until the rules are clarified and we see more consistent scoring, can you really blame him?
I’m not one to defend the fans that don’t appreciate the finer aspects of MMA. I’m always quick to pounce on anyone who puts down a fight for ending in a decision [more than most I’m highly aware that the best fights are more often decisions]. But in this case I think you can’t blame fans, or even promotions or promoters for emphasizing the importance of not leaving the decision to the judges. You can’t blame anyone but athletic commissions for that. As much as media heads might scream from their pedestals that fighters should have no hesitation to let the fight go to the judges, as Kizer accurately pointed out not even these same media heads can agree on many decisions, and this has been repeated many times since. The bottom line is that people score fights differently and the decision is frequently not black and white. Whether this is due to incompetent judges or ambiguous rules or misleading corner men, the reality is the same: if you leave the decisions to the judges, you might not get the result you expect, so if you’re a fighter you might be best served by heeding the words of the much vilified Dana White and “don’t leave it to the judges.”
Lytle’s determination to finish the fight segues into another frequent topic: wrestlers “ruining MMA.”. Lytle does a good job of praising wrestling and differentiating the skill of wrestling from fighters that are aiming to win a decision. This applies to both grapplers and strikers.
Lytle also complains that his recent submission over Brian Foster didn’t get any bonus for Submission of the Night. If promotions gave out finishing bonuses instead of win bonuses it would better serve the intention of the bonus, which is to reward fighters for trying to finish their opponents.
