When it comes to judging in MMA, nobody can ever agree on everything. Although, there are times when almost every fighter, journalist, fan and even expert seem to share the same opinion about a really bad scorecard.
This past weekend, Cory Sandhagen fought Marlon “Chito” Vera in the main event of UFC San Antonio. Even though Sandhagen put on a really amazing performance, he ended up having to wait for a split decision result. The judging was strange because judge Joel Ojeda gave the final three rounds and eventually the fight to Vera while Sal D’Amato and Chris Lee both agreed that they thought Sandhagen was the winner and scored him at 50-45 and 49-46 respectively.
After the event, people were angry at both Ojeda and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for allowing him to fight in the main event even though he had only been in one UFC fight previously, which was only in the prelims on that same night. Matt Brown, a UFC welterweight who has felt like he’s been treated unfairly by judging before, said he had never seen anything like the scorecard that Ojeda gave Saturday night.
Brown said that Ojeda should find a different job on the latest episode of The Fighter VS The Writer. Brown doesn’t care about Ojeda’s experience judging fights, he thinks it was wrong to have given ‘Chito’ even one round in the fight. People thought Chito won the third round because he landed one punch – but Brown thinks that is ridiculous.
“I really like Chito Vera, but on Saturday night he didn’t do anything to deserve the scorecard result. I think he would agree and admit it was not his best performance. There is no way to explain that scorecard and it’s probably one of the most wrong scorecards I’ve ever seen!”
The scorecard was strange because Ojeda gave three rounds to Vera, even though Lee and D’Amato both thought that Sandhagen won them. Brown couldn’t understand how a single round could have been given to Vera, let alone three! He thought it was wrong.
“It feels like the decision was wrong and he gave three rounds to him,” Brown said. “One judge gave him a 49-46 but some people were questioning the third round. It doesn’t make sense – it’s so wacky that it shouldn’t even be considered!”
Brown has argued that MMA judging scores need to be better, but even he couldn’t point to that as the reason why Ojeda gave Vera those three rounds at UFC San Antonio. All you had to do was look at the fight and it would have been obvious who should have won; according to Brown, there’s no way the score could have gone in ‘Chito’ Vera’s favor.
The fight between Sandhagen and ‘Chito’ wasn’t a good one. In fact, it was so bad that Sandhagen only landed one punch! Despite this, he still managed to win the match with three scorecards in his favor. This might make it hard to remember that he only won by a narrow margin.
Brown is saying that if Ojeda made a mistake, it’s possible that another official could have made the same mistake. That would be one of the worst decisions ever in sports but at this time, only Ojeda is getting blamed and he’ll probably stay anonymous until the UFC returns to Texas again.
Brown said it was great that the right guy won the fight, but there’s only three judges and three scorecards. He was close to losing because of this problem – whether it is with the judges or if the scoring system itself is too complicated and confusing. This is really a larger issue.
“I am really happy that we mentioned this, because a lot of people would have just ignored it thinking that the right winner won. But it’s important to talk about it. Cory was one vote away from losing this victory.”
