UFC 142, also known as UFC Rio – though I guess that should be UFC Rio 2 – went down last weekend and I didn’t catch it live. Not that I didn’t want to. I heard many people criticizing the card, but those are the people this series is aimed at. No, I had some personal obligations that kept me away Saturday night. When I finally finished “taking care of business” it was about 3 AM EST, so that’s when I sat down to catch the action from Brazil.
Exciting Finishes
While I found the card very entertaining, when I try to look at it objectively it was entertaining like a good Strikeforce card: not a lot of back and forth, or high caliber fighters, but plenty of exciting finishes.
In fact the last four fights featured fighters getting finished in the first round. But it’s worth noting that the most devastating finish was the main card’s first fight.
Here we saw Edson Barboza cruising to what looked like a unanimous decision, when WHAM! Highlight reel wheel kick to the grill immediately puts Terry Etim’s lights out in what promises to be a clear knockout of the year candidate.
Now I picked Barboza, but leading up to the event I thought it looked like a competitive fight between two solid prospects. What was interesting was listening to the ESPN UFC podcast out of the UK. To listen to Gareth Davies you would think Etim was the 2nd coming. They’re talking like Etim is going to walk through Barboza and wondering when he gets his title shot. Maybe they’re a little biased. I guess they’re allowed.
Judges Discretion
Three of the other finishes were surrounded by some controversy. Aldo grabbed the fence to avoid a take down, allowing him to subsequently knee Mendes in the face to finish his fight. Johnson and Belfort were stood up extremely quickly on multiple occasions, facilitating Belfort’s submission win. Lastly, and most controversially, Erick Silva dispatched of Carlo Prater in short order, but just as we were expecting the TKO win to be announced, referee Mario Yamasaki announced that Silva was being disqualified for shots to the back of the head.
All of these dynamics lend themselves to same realization: the rules leave a lot to the referee’s discretion. I talked extensively about ambiguity in the scoring system a long time ago and this is ultimately part of the same issue: the rules leave a lot to interpretation. The officials are responsible for interpreting those rules. Discrepancies in the ways referees implement the rules within the boundaries are fairly common. When a foul is identified the rules don’t dictate whether or not the referee must stop the action, deduct a point, give a warning etc. These are all up to the referee’s discretion.
The outcry from fans when Mirgliotta repeatedly stood up Johnson and Belfort, or when Yamasaki didn’t penalize Aldo for grabbing the fence, was minimal compared to the outcry towards Yamasaki when he disqualified Silva for delivering punches to the back of Prater’s head. Why was that? One thing I heard a lot was that most of the shots weren’t to the back of the head, but to the side or top. Well according to the rules, the top of the head is illegal whether you subscribe to the ‘mohawk’ or ‘headphones’ definitions of ‘the back of the head’. And while not all the shots hit Prater in an illegal area, out of the approximately 16 shots thrown by Silva, quite a few were illegal. Also consider that Yamasaki stated that he warned Silva. The most important factor is that Prater was no longer able to continue. Had this not been the case, it would have likely resulted in a penalty. But once the fouled fighter cannot continue, and especially after the fouling fighter has been warned, it results in a disqualification. Regardless of these facts, for fans, this was the discretionary move that upset them the most. Why? I don’t know. Some probably felt that unlike the other bouts, this is the one that resulted in the dominant fighter losing. Some may have been inspired by Joe Rogan’s questioning of Yamasaki post-fight, which I must say is something I fully support. Some were obviously blinded by their parlays falling apart before their eyes. Some are probably just idiots.
Life and Limb
With all this discretion at their disposal, officials definitely have the fighters’ future in their hands to a large degree. However, they’re not the only ones. Whoever plays a part in matchmaking, whether it’s the promotion, media, or vocal fans, is definitely putting a fighter’s limbs in jeopardy when they suggest a match made vs. Palhares. When I read the suggestion that Toquinho fight Brian Stann next, my first thought was “what do you have against Brian Stann?”
Fighter Pay
A lot has been made of fighter pay this past week. Well guess what? Companies exploit their employees all the time. I’ve long made peace with this fact, as fighters seem to be among the more exploited. But what’s unfortunate is that while companies exploiting fighters is standard business practice, fans are even worse when they act like fighters are simply objects that exist solely for their amusement.
That’s why I think of MMA as my guilty pleasure. I take solace in the notion that they knew, or should have known, what they were getting themselves into. I would love to see fighters get paid more. And while we’re at it, how about teachers, counselors, and police officers too?
Click here to rate all the fights from UFC 142.
