Time for Change with Judges, Referees
Jun 23, 2009
Until recently, UFC President Dana White had done an admirable job
of observing the unwritten rule that someone in his position is not
supposed to criticize referees and judges.
After allowing Mustapha al Turk to take a sadistic beating from Cheick Kongo at UFC 92, referee Steve Mazzagatti was in the crosshairs of fans the world over for his consistently inconsistent work. All the notoriously venomous White could say was, “He’s a nice guy, but he’s not a referee.”
Hardly the work you’d expect from a guy known to flesh out his
vocabulary with George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on
television. Yet the reaction showed that White knows full well
that, for all his power, he can hardly afford getting under the
skin of the sanctioning bodies responsible for appointing judges
and referees.
It’s an understandably difficult situation, but we’ve reached a tipping point as the level of incompetence displayed by both judges and referees now goes far beyond what we should expect or tolerate.
This is not a problem that will go away on its own. Consider that boxing remains the domain of flat-out biased judging despite multiple attempts at reform by boxers, promoters and even politicians. There will be those who go to the grave saying that the system is fine, that the occasional bad call boils down to basic human error and that a bad decision is the fault of the fighters for not finishing the fight.
Such statements ignore the responsibility of all involved to refine the system as best they can. When you’ve got multimillion-dollar contracts flying around and the sport’s still tenuous foothold in the American mainstream’s consciousness at stake, taking a hands-off approach to a broken system is just one of many ways the sport can send itself headfirst into a pile-up.
Of course, all the rhetoric in the world means nothing without solutions. Thankfully the solution is patently obvious and I’m hardly the first to suggest it: The UFC, being the only promotion with the stateside pull to get things done, needs to sit down with the sanctioning bodies and work out a rigorous certification program for both judges and referees.
Being a “nice guy” won’t cut it. Having some well-placed connections won’t cut it. Spending your weekends rolling on the mats won’t cut it. Becoming a licensed judge or referee needs to be a process that carries with it a resolute commitment to excellence.
For example, prospective referees should go through an extensive training camp with the sport’s best existing referees in order to prove they have the skills necessary to get the job done. Beyond that, all new referees should go through a probationary period during which they officiate only small-scale sanctioned events before being considered for full licensing and the opportunity to preside over the sport’s biggest fights. That would give the sanctioning bodies the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff, limiting the current crop of subpar officials from making more big-stakes bad calls and potentially ruining someone’s career.
Beyond that, a review system must be implemented to ensure that the referees who are licensed are kept fully accountable. In the current system, even the worst calls net only an apology and some public humiliation for whoever is responsible.
Keep the same criteria for judges, and the system will become a well-oiled machine capable of handling the split-second decision-making demanded of referees and the reasoned analysis judges must make within moments of the closing bell. This is the only option for staving off the gradual decline we’ve seen from the sport’s officials.
Sanctioning was advertised as a magical cure-all but has proven to be just one step of many on the road to making MMA a legitimate enterprise. The decline in judging and refereeing looks to be getting worse, and it’s only a matter of time before a major main event is ruined by a bad call. Once that happens, more errors will inevitably follow and many of the hard-earned fans that the sport has gained these past few years will lose interest.
Legitimacy is the lifeblood of modern sports. Without it everything else falls apart, and after an excruciatingly slow journey, MMA is knocking at the door of the public goodwill it needs to sustain itself. Losing that opportunity because of bureaucratic red tape and sheer laziness means never getting that opportunity again.
After allowing Mustapha al Turk to take a sadistic beating from Cheick Kongo at UFC 92, referee Steve Mazzagatti was in the crosshairs of fans the world over for his consistently inconsistent work. All the notoriously venomous White could say was, “He’s a nice guy, but he’s not a referee.”
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It’s an understandably difficult situation, but we’ve reached a tipping point as the level of incompetence displayed by both judges and referees now goes far beyond what we should expect or tolerate.
Just look at this past weekend’s TUF 9 finale card. Both Gleison
Tibau and Edgar
Garcia fell victim to the not altogether shocking ineptitude of
supposedly professional judges. Throw in a rash of bad calls made
by big-name referees and relative unknowns alike, and we’re at a
crossroads where the UFC has to choose between letting this go on
unabated or using its connections to the Nevada State Athletic
Commission to fix this and fix it now. After all, having former
NSAC Executive Director Marc Ratner working for the UFC should only
help to effect change with the sanctioning bodies.
This is not a problem that will go away on its own. Consider that boxing remains the domain of flat-out biased judging despite multiple attempts at reform by boxers, promoters and even politicians. There will be those who go to the grave saying that the system is fine, that the occasional bad call boils down to basic human error and that a bad decision is the fault of the fighters for not finishing the fight.
Such statements ignore the responsibility of all involved to refine the system as best they can. When you’ve got multimillion-dollar contracts flying around and the sport’s still tenuous foothold in the American mainstream’s consciousness at stake, taking a hands-off approach to a broken system is just one of many ways the sport can send itself headfirst into a pile-up.
Of course, all the rhetoric in the world means nothing without solutions. Thankfully the solution is patently obvious and I’m hardly the first to suggest it: The UFC, being the only promotion with the stateside pull to get things done, needs to sit down with the sanctioning bodies and work out a rigorous certification program for both judges and referees.
Being a “nice guy” won’t cut it. Having some well-placed connections won’t cut it. Spending your weekends rolling on the mats won’t cut it. Becoming a licensed judge or referee needs to be a process that carries with it a resolute commitment to excellence.
For example, prospective referees should go through an extensive training camp with the sport’s best existing referees in order to prove they have the skills necessary to get the job done. Beyond that, all new referees should go through a probationary period during which they officiate only small-scale sanctioned events before being considered for full licensing and the opportunity to preside over the sport’s biggest fights. That would give the sanctioning bodies the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff, limiting the current crop of subpar officials from making more big-stakes bad calls and potentially ruining someone’s career.
Beyond that, a review system must be implemented to ensure that the referees who are licensed are kept fully accountable. In the current system, even the worst calls net only an apology and some public humiliation for whoever is responsible.
Keep the same criteria for judges, and the system will become a well-oiled machine capable of handling the split-second decision-making demanded of referees and the reasoned analysis judges must make within moments of the closing bell. This is the only option for staving off the gradual decline we’ve seen from the sport’s officials.
Sanctioning was advertised as a magical cure-all but has proven to be just one step of many on the road to making MMA a legitimate enterprise. The decline in judging and refereeing looks to be getting worse, and it’s only a matter of time before a major main event is ruined by a bad call. Once that happens, more errors will inevitably follow and many of the hard-earned fans that the sport has gained these past few years will lose interest.
Legitimacy is the lifeblood of modern sports. Without it everything else falls apart, and after an excruciatingly slow journey, MMA is knocking at the door of the public goodwill it needs to sustain itself. Losing that opportunity because of bureaucratic red tape and sheer laziness means never getting that opportunity again.
