Mr. IWS
06-08-2014, 09:04 AM
We knew there was something in the air way up there in Albuquerque, N.M. What we didn’t know is that there’s also apparently something in the water.
We’re not talking the usual American tap water cocktail of arsenic and copper, either. We’re talking vision quest-quality hallucinogens here. The good stuff. The oh-no-my-face-is-melting stuff. The stuff that can allow you to watch a man get beat up and come away planning his victory party (http://mmajunkie.com/2014/06/ufc-fight-night-42-results-photos-ross-pearson-robbed-loses-to-diego-sanchez).
How else could two out of three judges possibly give Diego Sanchez (http://mmajunkie.com/tag/diego-sanchez) (25-7 MMA, 14-7 UFC) a win after Ross Pearson (http://mmajunkie.com/tag/ross-pearson) (15-7 MMA, 7-4 UFC) just spent 15 minutes dancing on his head? Poor eyesight might explain some bad judges’ calls. Good old-fashioned incompetence explains others. But this? I just don’t see how you get there without some mind-altering substances of the highest order. It might even be the worst robbery in MMA history, and that includes some pretty awful calls from some pretty bad judges.
Remember Leonard Garcia over Nam Phan? Or Lyoto Machida over Mauricio Rua? Sanchez’s split decision win over Ross Pearson at UFC Fight Night 42 was in an entirely different class of robbery.
If those were smash-and-grab stick-up jobs, this was a high-tech vault heist on the top floor of a ridiculous skyscraper. It wasn’t the kind of decision that makes you wonder if some judges just have different interpretations of the scoring criteria. It was the kind that makes you wonder if some judges aren’t just agents of chaos, trying to bring the sport down from the inside.
By the most generous interpretation, you could maybe give Sanchez one of the three rounds. Maybe. Possibly. Probably not, though. Probably you’d have to look at both the action in the cage and the stats on paper (http://fightmetric.com/fight-details/8d7ea177efadc718) and conclude that Pearson won every single round, and won them all clearly
Pearson landed more strikes than Sanchez in every single round. He scored the lone knockdown of the fight, and was credited with the only takedown. Effective aggression? All Pearson. Octagon control? Still not totally sure what that means, but unless it’s a contest to see who can bleed on more square feet of the canvas, Pearson won that too. The only areas where he didn’t completely dominate were scary facial expressions and crowd support.
If there’s any logic whatsoever to this decision, I have to assume it’s that last one that explains it. In case you missed it somehow, Sanchez is one of Albuquerque’s own. It’s probably the only thing that justified his placement in this co-main event after losing three of his past four (with the one win coming via another suspect split decision, that time over Takanori Gomi).
As we’ve seen in the past, a few well-timed whoops and hollers can sway a judge in a close fight. But this? Unless some of Sanchez’s friends and family were covering the judges’ eyes during all those times where Sanchez was getting his head popped back and his ribs tenderized, it’s hard to see that as a viable excuse.
This wasn’t just a bad decision; it was an absurd one. It’s the kind of thing that makes you a little bit disgusted with the sport. It makes you wish we could agree to disregard judges’ calls with a two-thirds majority vote, presidential veto override-style.
Even in Albuquerque, Sanchez simply couldn’t have enough friends and family to stuff that ballot box. And if you made the vote anonymous, I’m guessing some of the Sanchez faithful would have to admit that he didn’t come close to winning that fight.
We’re not talking the usual American tap water cocktail of arsenic and copper, either. We’re talking vision quest-quality hallucinogens here. The good stuff. The oh-no-my-face-is-melting stuff. The stuff that can allow you to watch a man get beat up and come away planning his victory party (http://mmajunkie.com/2014/06/ufc-fight-night-42-results-photos-ross-pearson-robbed-loses-to-diego-sanchez).
How else could two out of three judges possibly give Diego Sanchez (http://mmajunkie.com/tag/diego-sanchez) (25-7 MMA, 14-7 UFC) a win after Ross Pearson (http://mmajunkie.com/tag/ross-pearson) (15-7 MMA, 7-4 UFC) just spent 15 minutes dancing on his head? Poor eyesight might explain some bad judges’ calls. Good old-fashioned incompetence explains others. But this? I just don’t see how you get there without some mind-altering substances of the highest order. It might even be the worst robbery in MMA history, and that includes some pretty awful calls from some pretty bad judges.
Remember Leonard Garcia over Nam Phan? Or Lyoto Machida over Mauricio Rua? Sanchez’s split decision win over Ross Pearson at UFC Fight Night 42 was in an entirely different class of robbery.
If those were smash-and-grab stick-up jobs, this was a high-tech vault heist on the top floor of a ridiculous skyscraper. It wasn’t the kind of decision that makes you wonder if some judges just have different interpretations of the scoring criteria. It was the kind that makes you wonder if some judges aren’t just agents of chaos, trying to bring the sport down from the inside.
By the most generous interpretation, you could maybe give Sanchez one of the three rounds. Maybe. Possibly. Probably not, though. Probably you’d have to look at both the action in the cage and the stats on paper (http://fightmetric.com/fight-details/8d7ea177efadc718) and conclude that Pearson won every single round, and won them all clearly
Pearson landed more strikes than Sanchez in every single round. He scored the lone knockdown of the fight, and was credited with the only takedown. Effective aggression? All Pearson. Octagon control? Still not totally sure what that means, but unless it’s a contest to see who can bleed on more square feet of the canvas, Pearson won that too. The only areas where he didn’t completely dominate were scary facial expressions and crowd support.
If there’s any logic whatsoever to this decision, I have to assume it’s that last one that explains it. In case you missed it somehow, Sanchez is one of Albuquerque’s own. It’s probably the only thing that justified his placement in this co-main event after losing three of his past four (with the one win coming via another suspect split decision, that time over Takanori Gomi).
As we’ve seen in the past, a few well-timed whoops and hollers can sway a judge in a close fight. But this? Unless some of Sanchez’s friends and family were covering the judges’ eyes during all those times where Sanchez was getting his head popped back and his ribs tenderized, it’s hard to see that as a viable excuse.
This wasn’t just a bad decision; it was an absurd one. It’s the kind of thing that makes you a little bit disgusted with the sport. It makes you wish we could agree to disregard judges’ calls with a two-thirds majority vote, presidential veto override-style.
Even in Albuquerque, Sanchez simply couldn’t have enough friends and family to stuff that ballot box. And if you made the vote anonymous, I’m guessing some of the Sanchez faithful would have to admit that he didn’t come close to winning that fight.