Morning Report: Michael Bisping Calls For Responsibility In Judging MMA: ‘In Any Other Area Of Life If You Do A Crappy Job, You Get Fired’

Don’t say “don’t leave it in the hands of the judges” around Michael Bisping.

This weekend, former UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway will return to the cage against Calvin Kattar at UFC Fight Island 7. It’s a highly anticipated fight and one Bisping was discussing the fight on his Believe me podcast recently. During the preview, the conversation turned to Holloway’s most recent fight, a controversial decision lost to Alexander Volkanovsky in their rematch this year and the phrase “don’t leave it in the hands of the judges” was spoken, which sent Bisping on a tangent.

“I hate that expression because no fighter wants to leave it in the hands of the judges,” Bisping said. “No fighter has ever, ever thought, ‘Oooo, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to leave this in the hands of three random people I’ve never met. I’m going to work my ass for several months, I’m going to put my career on the line, I’m going to put my health on the line, I’m going to fight in a fight and what I’m going to do is a strategy: I’m going to leave it in between. hands of the judges because we all know they all make a lot of mistakes, that’s what I’m going to do. No one ever foresees it! You want to come in, go out. You are not paid for overtime. If you can get a quick knockout, great! Unfortunately, when you fight the best guys in the world, and you’re also one of the best guys in the world, you can’t always get them out of there.

Judging MMA has been a constant source of frustration for fans and fighters in recent years, with seemingly every fight card having at least one scuffed decision from the judges. In recent years, many MMA luminaries have come up with a litany of ways to help solve this problem, ranging from open scoring and adding judges to having veterans become judges, but for Bisping, the solution to the problem is simple, it must simply be adopted: responsibility for failing.

“Almost every event is a bizarre fight that is marked,” Bisping continued. “Even while commenting I was like, ‘What the hell? How did this judge come to this conclusion? I have said it before and I will say it again, they must be held accountable. Number one, these guys are doing a job. They do a job. They are remunerated! So you have to do this job well. In any other area of ​​life, if you do a shitty job, you get fired!

“When I say responsible, it’s very simple. If there’s a weird score that doesn’t make sense, it’s sitting in a room with two or three other judges and you explain why you scored that way, and if you can’t give a realistic excuse that either rational and credible, then you are either incompetent or inaccurate and either way you are not fit for the fucking job. It’s that simple and I don’t understand why it’s not implemented.

“… Sometimes a judge’s decision can change your life, change the amount of money you’re about to earn, make you a world champion, maybe make you a world champion. . These are high stakes! “

The answer is probably quite simple too: there is no money in it. Adding oversight to judgment would be an increase in work for a fairly minimal gain (and arguably tangible loss) from a commission perspective. Unfortunately for some fighters this means that they will find themselves on the wrong side from time to time and the best way to avoid it would be, in fact, not to leave their fate in the hands of the judges.

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N / A.

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Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow

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