A Great Fight Spoiled

An old quote often attributed to Mark Twain says that “golf is a good walk spoiled”. Well, the judges spoiled an absolutely great fight on Saturday night by failing to make use of the criminally underutilized 10-8 round. With the way the first four rounds were scored, there’s simply no way that Henderson-Shogun shouldn’t have been a draw.

Ralph McKnight, Steve Morrow and Susan Thomas-Gitlin all watched, as the rest of us did, while Mauricio “Shogun” Rua effortlessly landed a takedown on an completely exhausted Dan Henderson in the opening seconds of the fifth round. They presumably had their eyes open for at least of the majority of the 79 total strikes Shogun landed in the fifth round, contrasted with the paltry 8 strikes that Henderson managed to answer with from his back. One would assume that the three noticed that five times Shogun mounted Henderson, as well as the time he spent in side control.

Yet somehow, when it came time to write in their scores for the round, not one of them scratched in an “8″ for Henderson.

If 10-8 scores are to be reserved for rounds where a “fighter dominates the round”, which is the text used on the Nevada State Athletic Commission website, how does the fifth round of Hendo-Shogun not equal domination?

We all know that strikes off your back are fairly ineffective, besides the rare shot that cuts open the fighter on top. Besides the eight shots Hendo landed, all he was able to do was a)momentarily improve position from mount to half-guard several times (in which Shogun instantly retook mount each time) and b)survive. Again, how is that not a 10-8 round?

It’s worth noting that of the three judges who scored the main event, only one (McKnight) also scored Stephan Bonnar’s win over Kyle Kingsbury, and he failed to give Bonnar a 10-8 round in the fight, while Jackie Denkin gave Bonnar two of them.

Now, I’m not advocating that 10-8 rounds be handed out like candy, but there has to be some kind of separation between your normal 10-9 round where someone slightly gets the better of their opponent and the kind of performance Shogun put on in the fifth round on Saturday night.

All three are licensed to judge in California and have worked in only a handful of big events in the San Jose, Fresno and Stockton areas, so their judging histories don’t reveal a lot of missed opportunities to score 10-8 rounds, especially since they shouldn’t be used extremely liberally.

However, when a guy is regularly just doing enough to survive and nothing more, what else can you do?

Let’s address, for a second, what Henderson and many fans might be saying, which is that a 10-8 could have been given to Henderson in the third, which would make the 10-8 that should have been given to Shogun in the fifth a wash, as Hendo would still win by a point.

I don’t want to hear that, though. Shogun won every second of the fifth round, while in the third, Shogun was arguably in more trouble for a little while than Hendo ever was in the fifth, but Shogun also did something that Henderson failed to do in the final stanza: he won part of the round. If your opponent rebounds and wins the final minute and a half of the round, it puts the idea of “domination” into question- it makes the term even more subjective. I don’t think there’s any subjectivity to the domination that took place in the fifth.

Yet again, we have a perfect argument for half-point scoring, where Henderson perhaps could have gotten a 10-8.5 for the third round and maybe the judges would have felt more comfortable giving a 10-8 to Shogun in the fifth. As it is, Keith Kizer of the NSAC swears that judges are not discouraged from giving 10-8 (and 10-10) rounds, but the rarity of each seems to suggest that there is some kind of issue. Kizer also maintains that he doesn’t want to encourage judges to use them more, instead seeming to think that the description of a fighter “dominating” a round should suffice.

Apparently not, though. As a result, a classic fight will always bring a bitter taste to the mouths of many MMA fans. Shogun and Henderson were each ready to put forth an amazing effort on Saturday night; unfortunately, the judges didn’t seem to get that memo.

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Tags: Dan Henderson, horrible judging, Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua, UFC, UFC 139