Keller's Take
KELLER: The Machida vs. Shogun decision brings into question whether champions should get preferential scoring
Oct 25, 2009 - 4:04:21 PM KELLER: The Machida vs. Shogun decision brings into question whether champions should get preferential scoring

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How do three out of three judges make a decision that nobody, including probably his family and friends watching the fight, agreed with? I agree with Jamie Penick's analysis that while Shogun Rua clearly fought the better fight and did more damage throughout, it wasn't such a blowaway win that it's the biggest outrage in UFC history.

If I had to make a case for Machida and a defense of the judges' decision, it'd have to rely on the argument that a champion deserves preferential treatment. It's like the "tie goes to the runner" in baseball taken up a notch.

Machida didn't "get beat," as Jamie said earlier, he was outscored. Rua was just conservative enough throughout the fight to not lose, but also not win. Dana White has said it numerous times to fighters - don't leave it in the hands of the judges. Rua looked content to leave it in the hands of the judges instead of going for the kill. It's a lesson to all challengers in the future, in lieu of a major change in how UFC instructs judges to score fights, that they need to take it to the champion.

Again, I'm stretching here simply to make a case defending the judges here, even though I'd have scored the fight for Rua and think he deserves to be champion today. Continuing on that path, if you believe that all champions had to overcome the same bias toward the previous champion, then what seems unfair when looking at an isolated fight becomes fair in the big picture. Machida decisively won his title. He didn't edge out a majority of rounds and rely on judges. So his challenger should have to face the same steep requirement to capture the belt.

In a way, if you're a fan of aggressive fights where challengers have to take it to the champion and not sit back with the equivalent of a 3-2 lead in baseball going into the ninth, then last night's judges' decision is good for your enjoyment of the sport.

While Shogun overall was more aggressive and scored more and punished more, Machida's few high points stood above anything Rua did. Machida did go all out for a KO more than Shogun did.

The key is not to be coy about the rules. Fans and fighters deserve to have UFC declare that challengers can't eek out the equivalent of a 6-3 football score. They need to go for touchdowns, not run out the clock or settle for fieldgoals. As long as everyone is clear on that, then our jaws won't be dropped in the future when three judges see a fight differently than pretty much the rest of the universe. It'd be clearly built into the rules - champions have to be beat, and a slight-edge in a five-round near-stalemate doesn't lead to a title change.

I wonder if last night's fight wasn't a title fight, but instead was between two challengers trying to earn a title shot, if the judges' would have scored it differently?

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Wade Keller is the Supervising Editor and Founder of MMATorch.com. He has covered MMA for the Torch since before UFC existed, including Japanese shoot-fight cards such as Pancrase in the early 1990s, plus all of the early UFC PPV events (some of those reports can be found in the MMATorch Flashbacks category). He covered the first UFC event in Las Vegas in person in 2001 and Brock Lesnar's recent return to his hometown Minneapolis when he defeated "Crazyhorse" Heath Herring. He has interviewed Dana White, Mike Goldberg, the original UFC match-maker Art Davie, and others in MMA over the years. He has also been interviewed as an MMA reporter by major newspapers dating back to the mid-1990s. He has trained in karate, judo, and jiu jitsu, with over 12 years of formal martial arts training and tournament fighting. He is a double black stripe belt in tae kwon do.