The Doggy Bag

I personally had the Quinton Jackson-Lyoto Machida fight 29-28 for "Rampage." Based on the scoring criteria of MMA, I think it's crazy that anyone would have the fight any other way. It was "Rampage" coming forward and scoring for the first two rounds. He outlanded Machida and forced Machida to fight his game up against the fence. He snapped his head back with punches. Machida won round three clearly and I understand why there is so much call for a fight like this to be five rounds, I agree with that too. But for the three rounds we saw, I don't know how people don't see "Rampage" as the winner.
-- Zach from Gainesville

Tomasz Marciniak, European correspondent: I think you're misapplying the judging criteria for this fight. Both Compustrike and Fightmetric agree that Jackson outlanded Machida on total blows, but when the distinction is made for power strikes it’s very even on Compustrike and Machida significantly outlands Rampage 12-to-5 in the first round according to Fightmetric. He was landing cleaner, harder blows.

Thus you, and plenty of other observers, credit Rampage's "aggression" for winning the first two rounds. "Effective aggressiveness" is indeed one of the criteria, however it is the least important one, and it emphasizes the “effective” part. Throwing strikes and not landing is not effective aggressiveness and moving forward and getting struck is not effective aggressiveness.

The chief problem with the use of aggressiveness as a judging criterion is that people have began to equate it with steps taken forward. It has also warped into this ultimate tie-breaker when unable to weigh more important criteria, resorting to this very simplified and often incorrect notion of aggressiveness. If you recall, this was the exact line of defense used by Doug Crosby to validate his atrocious 50-45 scorecard in the first Penn-Edgar fight when he allegedly wrote, “Edgar dictated the tone of the fight, successfully implemented and executed a strategy, landed better strikes, and basically outworked Penn.”

Veteran judge Nelson Hamilton had his new MMA rules approved for trial use at California Amateur MMA Organization events, and it’s a step in the right direction that aggression has been entirely crossed out of the criteria.