An MMA Thanksgiving: 2014 All-Turkey Team

A number of inexplicable scorecards have been cast. | Photo: Stephen Albanese/Tailstar.com

Judges

Although it is intimately associated with Festivus, I’ve come to understand as a non-American that Thanksgiving is often considered a time to air your grievances and tell your family how they have disappointed you over the past year. It is a time for judgment. In that case, who better to take to task during turkey time?

Compared to some recent years, it has been a solid year for MMA judging, especially considering the UFC’s titanic schedule, which you would imagine would create so many fights that a slew of infuriating verdicts would be inevitable. Instead, the sport has avoided having its biggest, most relevant fights tainted by bureaucracy. However, do not for a second think that means scorecard shenanigans are dead and gone. They are still claiming victims. I will save my Thanksgiving spleen for the judges that deserve it most, though. I try to be sympathetic and thoughtful when it comes to any kind of competitive decision, especially if it comes down to a single swing round. Even if you believe a fighter clearly won two rounds, perhaps you can concede that one of those rounds was ebb-and-flow and that scoring the contest 29-28 for the other guy or gal might not be a profound injustice; but what of those scorecards where it seems like no one is watching the watchmen? What about Douglas Crosby's 50-45 for Frankie Edgar in the first B.J. Penn fight and other scores like it?

There have been some lame-duck scorecards this year, such as Derek Cleary’s 29-28 Stephan Bonnar scorecard against Tito Ortiz, Anthony Dimitrou’s 30-27 Milana Dudieva scorecard over Elizabeth Phillips, Andy Haigh’s insane 30-27 scorecard for Sean Strickland over Luke Barnatt. Yet, one man dared to go further, dared to judge more poorly, and for that, we pray that he has a mishap with an electric carving knife. Judge Jeff Collins, a veteran of the game at that, turned in a 30-27 scorecard for the inimitable Diego Sanchez against Ross Pearson in June in New Mexico. Home state judge Chris Tellez maybe had a tickle in his heart for the local boy Sanchez, giving him a 29-28 card, but Collins went fully mental on the case, giving “The Dream” all three rounds in a fight in which he was out-landed in total and significant strikes in every single round, all while being cleanly cracked to the head and body. It remains the worst decision of 2014, and it seems perfectly apropos-if-depressing that the most indefensible scorecard of the year had a part in it.

Poor Pearson. No wonder the British do not celebrate Thanksgiving.