MMA-Analyst.com is looking for writers who can devote a little time each day to writing 1-2 small opinion/editorial pieces based on current news, events, and anything else MMA related. My schedule is beginning to get rough during the days, and I haven't had as much time to devote to the site as I've wanted. I'll be pushing out 1-2 articles per day, but would love to keep the analytical pieces coming for the fans who read this site.

If you want your voice heard, or have some intelligent opinions regarding the sport of mixed martial arts, email me at lr@mma-analyst.com with a small summary of why you want to write along with some information like age, background, etc.

Adam Swift at MMAPayout.com posted some interesting information regarding the UFC’s entry into the network television market alongside their prime competition in the American market in ProElite. Referencing some of the answers Dana White gave during an interview with The Score in Canada, White stated that a network deal will be “very soon” and later hinted at potentially being as soon as six months down the road.

Swift reports in the article that he has learned that FOX is believed to be the leading network in the race to create a partnership with the UFC. The site also reported that ESPN was in the running as well to produce shows on their network.

This brings me to a concern that the sport of mixed martial arts could eventually run into and somewhat ties in with a recent interview from Michael David Smith at AOL Fanhouse with Tony Reali of ESPN. Quoted from FightOpinion.com:

I’m really interested to see how MMA does this year on network TV. My gut tells me we have to get MMA. If somebody asked you 10 years ago would ESPN put poker on you’d have said no. There’s a resistance right now from an older generation, not just at ESPN but my grandfather was a huge boxing fan, I don’t know if he’d be taking to MMA.

I know how Tony and Michael feel, which is that it’s too brutal to put on television. We’ve talked about putting Rampage Jackson on PTI and what happens in the end is they can’t get past the brutality of it. I don’t know that it’s really more brutal than boxing, there are long-term injuries in boxing. I think it’s compelling. When you watch it you can see what the appeal is, and I think it will be a ratings success on network TV.

Tony Reali hosts “Around The Horn” on ESPN, if you can’t put the quote with a face. The intriguing parts of this quote are that the mindset in the sports industry and the idea that the young generation of sports fans out there may be changing. Reali obviously understands that MMA is beginning to get huge in terms of potential. It’s a facelift of boxing for people who want more than the standard striking aspect of a fight. He also makes the point that boxing may not be as brutal as MMA, and that those points are made by people who oppose the sport (Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser). Maybe MMA is beginning to get through to the thick headed mindset of old school boxing fans and people believing it really is more dangerous.

If that’s the case and the rumors regarding the UFC coming to FOX end up being true, we could potentially see a network television blowup for mixed martial arts. NBC is currently airing re-run matchups from past Strikeforce events with slick production and fighter profiles. CBS will be airing EliteXC with likely some better production, and FOX could push to air some UFC events. It’s only a matter of time before ABC may get in on the action. The big 4 would ultimately be airing MMA on a monthly basis, and it could eventually reach bi-weekly numbers.

My concern here revolves around the rise of MMA in the mainstream. While the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NASCAR all feature game after game, event after event of action that never gets old to those die-hard fans of their respective sport, will MMA have the same effect in attracting that type of casual fanbase due to their large exposure in a network television era?

It’s tough to say, but if fans are attracted to the sport and educate themselves about the actual fight game involved in mixed martial arts, I would say yes only because of the way that I was pulled in by the sport. There are still countless critics of the sport that compare it to “cockfighting” and stating it’s too brutal for a casual fan of all things sports to be watching on network television. I beg to differ that those people wouldn’t be watching.

In fact, I believe firmly that those casual fans out there not familiar with the sport may very well tune in to see those huge knockouts, but inevitably become enriched in the “ground game” and the intricate details that make a fighter complete. There is a huge roadblock in the perception of mixed martial arts, and hopefully the promotions that get the chance to push MMA to the top will make use of educating those new fans coming on board.

The biggest problem to overcome will be what most of the promotions will be seeking: mainstream media. While sports media will cover the events and fighters, the critics will continue to blast mixed martial arts will arguments revolving around brutality. Adding more promotions to the network mix will inevitably bring the onslaught of those critics, and hopefully the networks involved won’t back down. The sport can produce numbers and add new fans to the sport given the chance. Let’s hope the mainstream media doesn’t sink us before that can happen.

Michael David Smith over at AOL Fanhouse posted an article on Sunday talking about the matchup between Chuck Liddell and Keith Jardine, and the controversial split decision that occurred in that fight. Two judges scored the bout 29-28 Jardine, while Marcos Rosales scored the bout 29-28 Liddell. His theory is that there may be too many judges in the sport that favor the bigger stars over the underdogs in those types of matchups.

Fans have seen their share of controversial decisions, and we tend to associate bad judging with a few names in the business. Namely, Cecil Peoples has earned the reputation as a bad judge due to the multiple 29-28 decisions he has made against 30-27 votes for the opposite fighters from other judges. I won't delve into his judging plunders as many fans are on the fence about many of them, but should we attribute decisions like the ones that Cecil Peoples has made in the past to favoritism?

I don't believe there are any judges in the sport of mixed martial arts that would ever favorably decide a fight because fighter A is much more popular than fighter B, or a star of the promotion. I don't believe there are “behind the scenes” dealings that plague our sport like other sports have had to deal with in the past. Favoritism in judging, for the most part, is non-existent in the major promotions in the world, and even the worst judging performances have people agreeing with the judge.

What causes scoring to be on different ends of the spectrum? Subjectiveness. There in lies the problem that has plagued this sport when it comes to deciding ultimately who won a fight. How much is a takedown really worth? Should a takedown count if the fighter does nothing with it? Do certain judges  score punches landed even when an opponent defends the strikes successfully? All of these questions deal with the subjectiveness of a judge, and it's what makes MMA a tough sport to judge.

We should be concentrating creating a breed of judges in this sport that uniformly have the knowledge to judge an MMA bout consistently across the board. If all judges used the same criteria, we wouldn't have as much subjectiveness in our scoring system. Of course, there are many who believe the 10 point system must go, which could also harbor some benefits. Either way, favoritism in judging is the easy way out in blaming someone for a call gone wrong. It's their subjective thinking that is really to blame, but can we really blame them? In their own minds, they have judged a perfect fight.

Until a criteria is uniformly consistent across all promotions and commissions, we'll still have these problems. Right now, there doesn't seem to be any type of hard push to train these veteran judges in the new ways, but there also isn't any set criteria to determine what a takedown is worth, activeness on the ground, etc. Hopefully, we'll see this change in the years to come.

As you all know, my weekend wasn't exactly filled with fun. My fever/headache/cold that lasted for what seemed an eternity caused me to hit the couch for the entire weekend and early into the work week. Luckily, there was some MMA on the tube this last weekend and some news I was able to check out as well.

Strikeforce @ The Dome: Absolute garbage

Say what you want about the Riggs' fight or the Sapp fight, but the entire card was terrible. It was filled with lackluster performances by subpar fighters. It was absolutely boring and caused me to fall asleep more than once. There is something wrong with your promotion when the next fight's matchup graphics come up on the television, and your audience cringes at the thought of another boring decision bout... and that outcome actually happens. Two hours of the event had gone by before a relevant bout occurred.

Franca released from UFC contract: Big Deal?

Not really. The Lightweight division in the UFC is so damn stacked nowadays that Hermes Franca is just another casualty of being on a very long suspension. I imagine the UFC feels that people have forgot about him, and that they have TUF alumni and other Lightweights that stunned crowds with their performances on UFN cards. Don't be too mad if you're a fan of Hermes, he'll be fighting in Europe or Asia very soon.

UFC 82 Countdown: Not too shabby

I actually watched the Countdown show for UFC 82 early this week, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Earlier works of the show were terrible in comparison to the newer versions of the show, so it's a nice surprise to see the production moving up for the UFC and SpikeTV. I'm still not convinced that Dan Henderson has what it takes to defeat Anderson Silva, and I worry that the whole group of MMA fighters who say that Silva's strength is "unbelievable" may be Henderson's downfall. What if Silva is stronger?

Randy Couture states the obvious on 'Inside MMA': Get a clue

Couture stated that "The best fighters have to be allowed to fight each other" to boys over at Inside MMA during its broadcast on HDNet this past Friday. My response would be that Couture is spitting the same stuff at us again, and I'm a bit sick of hearing about it. We all know that the best should be fighting the best. There is always one thing that gets in the way of all of that, and that's business. In our case, the UFC's exclusivity is a giant that has to be overcome. When one company is trying to further themselves rather than further the sport as a whole, those dreams of having the best fighters fight the best fighters are put on hold.

Paul Daley might retire: Not a big fan

Don't get me wrong, Daley is an able striker with some great power. From what I've seen from him, he could potentially be a star. Why would he suddenly retire? Nobody knows for sure, but he surely isn't ready for the elite fighters yet. To be honest, I'm not sure if he will ever be able to compete with the upper-echelon of talent in his weight class.

Plowing through my daily regiment of news items that revolve around technology and IT work alongside my MMA news, I ran over this study regarding the theory that humans love violence as much as sex, food, and drugs. Here's the quote from the article:

"Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food," said study team member Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "We have found that the reward pathway in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved."

Mouse brawl

For the experiments, the researchers placed a pair of mice, one male and one female, in a cage. Then, the female was removed and a so-called male intruder mouse entered the cage. That triggered aggressive behavior in the resident male. The tell-tale signs of aggression included tail rattle, an aggressive sideways stance, boxing and biting.

After the initial scuffle ended, the resident male mouse was trained to nose-poke a target to get the intruder to return. Results showed the home mouse consistently poked the target and fought with the introduced mouse, indicating, the researchers say, that the aggressive encounter was seen as a reward.

"We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it," Kennedy said.

To figure out whether the brain's reward pathway was involved, the scientists treated the home mice with a drug to block dopamine in certain parts of the brain known to be involved in rewards like food and drugs.

The treated mice were less likely to instigate the intruder's entry. “This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role," Kennedy said.

So, I guess the UFC beat us all to the punch. Adding in sexy ring girls and two guys beating the crap out of each other is a pure mixture that no human can deny. Who knew the UFC was privy to this before nearly everyone. Interestingly enough, I haven't seen guys at UFC events also stuffing their faces like gluttons while watching guys fight and staring at Arianny Celeste all night, but I'm sure that's going on as well.

The article went on to state that the mice were more aggressive after their initial battles because they tasted the "thrill of victory". It amazes me when these studies come out because it seems very obvious that the reason was exactly that. Fighters fight once and the "thrill of victory" sets in. They want to succeed and be seen as the best of the best, the ultimate fighting machine. We don't need scientists to tell us that.

I'm currently down south for Christmas, and we'll have some slow posting for the next few days, but I want to announce some small site updates that will be coming very, very soon. I'm currently working on a new site layout to replace the current default site template that makes me cringe. We are also branding the site with some new logos, and we should have a new look and feel to the site within the next month. Changes will be slowly being worked into the site.

Have a wonderful Christmas, and we'll be back in a few days with an influx of analytical articles.

MMA judges are having a very tough time these days. With the controversial decision between Michael Bisping and Matt Hamill and now the follow-up controversy between Bisping and Evans, we've seen a trend in judging. That trend has to do with takedowns and what the value of a takedown is worth to a judge. What about judging as a whole? There are many people who believe that if we judged the fight based on statistics, we would see more definite results instead of by a round by round basis. I liken this to the debate on whether the American public should have an electoral college voting system or award the winner of the popular vote the President. Is it a state by state (round by round) tally, or a popular vote tally (over the length of the fight)? Let's take a solid look into this aspect of MMA that many fans don't understand or hear about too often except in a horrible decision.

Takedowns

I first want to touch on the takedown aspect of judging. The arguments, in my mind, consist of two schools of thinking. First, if the aggressor happens to take you down during the fight, it should count for something. This is usually rationalized by the fact that the aggressor is "aggressively" moving into position to take his opponent down and work some sort of ground game. Since the aggressor is taking risk in shooting for the takedown, he should be awarded some sort of value in the judge's mind for that successful attempt. This was the evident factor to me that made the Matt Hamill vs. Michael Bisping fight so controversial. Although I thought Bisping's boxing was fairly good throughout the fight with Hamill landing the more powerful punches, Hamill's takedowns seemed to be the determining factor for me to give Hamill the fight. He was aggressively going for those takedowns, but he didn't do much with them on the mat. I was simply using the school of thinking that I thought was considered the standard in mixed martial arts for judges.

In researching the judging after the fight, I ran across a few key articles that I found interesting. Namely, a few interviews with Jeff Mullen, one of the judges. In an interview that was done after the Clay Guida vs. Tyson Griffin fight that he judged, he had a few choice statements that I took into account when judging a fight for myself. The main point was that effective striking has more weight if it is done for 80% of the round as does effective grappling if it is done for a large portion of the round. I agree with that statement. One of the statements that is a bit unclear, however, is when Mullen talks about Octagon control. Takedowns are classified in this category as a move to get better position on an opponent to mount an attack. The impression from the interview is that the basic takedown still accounts for something in the category, but stunning takedowns that hurt an opponent are worth more. I agree with this to an extent, but if a basic takedown counts for something, what's the debate? The debate is whether or not the other aspects of the round outweighed the Octagon control portion of the round. If Rashad Evans was taking Bisping down a couple of times per round, but doing nothing with it, should it still count for control or should it be nullified?

This brings me to the second school of thinking. If a takedown occurs, should the value of that takedown be nullified if the opponent does absolutely nothing with the takedown? Obviously if the opponent is working submission attempts, there is value in that, we can agree on that. What if the opponent simply shoots, puts the opponent to the floor, tries to work some fists, but is stifled by arm grabs by his opponent with good defense, should that takedown still count? Most people in this school of thinking feel that if the opponent can nullify activity or damage on the ground, the takedown worth should basically be cancelled out. Bisping stated this same kind of thinking in the post-fight interview.

Interestingly enough, Mullen mentioned this type of thinking when he judged the Bisping-Hamill bout. In this posting from MMA.tv, he mentioned that because Hamill did nothing with his takedowns, and Bisping was countering the takedowns with jabs from his back and submission tries. No mention if the takedown even counted for any value. It seems a bit of a contradiction, but to be fair, Bisping did enough from the back to warrant the argument.

Which stance do you take? Should the aggressive nature of the takedown count for some type of worth even if the fighter is unable to mount an attack or jockey for better position? Or should a takedowns be counted for value only if the fighter can nullify the defense of his opponent and do some damage or gain a better position? Let me know what you think in our comments section.

Judging in general

The other argument that has been gaining steam is whether or not the judging aspect should move away from round-by-round values and to a more cumulative scoring system. An example would be the Matt Hamill vs. Michael Bisping fight. If you consider Hamill's dominance in the first round and assign values to key aspects of a fight such as standup, ground, and general control of the fight, you could come up with a base value for his performance in the round. Continue to do that throughout the fight and some rounds will have more bearing on the final decision. This also evens out when cardio becomes a factor because a fighter may be able to mount a huge offensive late when his opponent is gassed. It also has limitations.

A fighter could come out in a flurry dropping huge blows to his opponent and mounting him. If his opponent somehow survives the onslaught, it may be impossible for him to win. This is the reason for 10-8 rounds. The pure dominance of a round by a fighter is rewarded, making it harder for his opponent, who showed no defense or offense in the round, to come back. The cumulative scoring would garner the same results, but with round judging, it may be closer because some judges may feel it was still a 10-9 round. In general, a fighter could demolish his opponent in the first round, and fight poorly for two more rounds and still win under a cumulative scoring system. Would it be better? Depends on the criteria and values.

With that said, I still think the 10 point must system isn't a terrible system if the criteria is laid out plain and simple and is uniform across the board. Some judges tend to value takedowns differently than others and I think this may have been one of the reasons we saw a split decision on Saturday night between Bisping and Evans. It's been a contributing factor in many decisions in mixed martial arts. Until we see some sort of uniformity in the judging aspects of MMA, we will see some judges scoring bouts this way and that way and referring to their takedown theories differently. If the criteria was uniform, the fight was still close enough to garner split results though. Either way, there needs to be some decisions made on how takedowns are valued within a matchup.

I've heard other arguments that state that judges are entitled to their own criteria and that's what makes going to the judges something that fighters should never want to do. I agree, fighters shouldn't want to go to decision and they should try to end it, but it doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes two fighters matchup well against each other and they cannot finish one another. Judges have their own criteria, I respect that, but sometimes judges have horribly bad criteria conditions. Maybe one judge scored a round in favor of the fighter who was getting whooped on all round, but managed to pull off a sick kimura attempt at the end of the round only to be stopped by the bell. That judge scores it in favor of the fighter who attempted the submission. Ridiculous. Some judges do that. That's where we need criteria that is uniform.

Final thoughts

If Bisping would have been declared the winner on Saturday, you would have seen a major blowup on the 'Net, but Rashad won, and we move on. Fact is, judging is moving more and more into the spotlight and being looked at for its flaws. I'd like to see some type of regulation that holds classes and puts some uniformity to the criteria. I've read that John McCarthy and Herb Dean run classes on referees and I heard possibly judges as well. More of that could work wonders on the judging part of MMA.

Judging is evolving day by day, and I think we will some more uniformity later down the line, but I ask the question, is uniformity the ultimate solution? Can the judging still be fairly good with some judges taking exception to different forms of valuing a fight? It's possible, unless they simply have bad standards such as the situation a mentioned before in which the judge gives a round to a fighter who did nothing until the end of the round. Hopefully, the quality of judging increases as the scrutiny of it increases as well.

As the topic states, Matt Kaplan has joined our team here at MMA-analyst.com. Matt has a small blog called Kodiak MMA, in which he talks about news, has some interviews, and commentary on the world of MMA. He will be contributing to MMA-Analyst with his take on upcoming fight cards and previews. He also will be letting us inside his life as a BJJ student, and hopefully we will get access to some exclusive interviews with some UFC fighters. He's interviewed Luke Cuommo, Kenny Florian, and Rob McCullough in the past. Welcome him aboard, and check out his blog.

Today is the launch date for MMA-Analyst.com. We look forward to providing some MMA content that people may have not seen before in the MMA community. In-depth analysis of fight cards on some of the biggest MMA events in the world will be provided, and used as a discussion for MMA fans to talk about and get ideas about how they think many fo these exciting upcoming cards will happen.

We look forward to hearing from everyone!