(Vierra is standing third from the right in the black gi, next to Cesar Gracie. / Photo via MixedMartialArts.com)

Following the conclusion of UFC on FOX 7 on Saturday, many die-hard fight fans switched their dials to Showtime to watch the WBA light-middleweight title fight between rising boxing star Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez and Austin Trout. Though Trout arguably won a majority of the early rounds, the fight’s “open-scoring” system revealed that the judges were in the bag for Alvarez from the beginning. When the match was over, the scores came back unanimously for the 22-year-old ginger: 115-112, 116-111 and a completely batshit 118-109 from judge Stanley Christodoulou. As usual, we MMA types used the opportunity to take potshots at boxing’s endemic corruption.

Alright, so get a load of this shit: Late Saturday night, Ben Henderson’s brother pointed out that Wade Vierra — the dissenting judge in Henderson’s split-decision win over Gilbert Melendez — is a “Master Instructor” for the GracieFighter network, and runs a Cesar Gracie affiliate school in Roseville, California. Considering that Melendez is a well-known Cesar Gracie product, the conflict-of-interest alarms should have been ringing for the California State Athletic Commission, and Vierra shouldn’t have been allowed to judge the fight. But the CSAC didn’t catch it, or didn’t care, or hey, maybe they were in on it. Either way, Bendo’s special night was put in jeopardy.

When judging controversies happen in MMA, fans usually chalk it up to ignorance rather than corruption. But when ignorance from MMA judges and commissions is allowed to exist indefinitely, that is corruption — it’s a corruption of the sport’s legitimacy, even if nobody’s directly profiting from it. Obviously, the UFC lightweight title fight was so close that Vierra’s 48-47 tally for Melendez was much more defensible than Christodoulou’s 118-109 for Canelo. Still, the incident gave the UFC event an appearance of commission malfeasance that reflects very poorly on the promotion and the sport in general. (Was somebody paid off to allow Vierra a spot on the judges’ table? Or is the CSAC just that inept?)

It’s a good thing Henderson won. Otherwise, we might have had a scandal on our hands.

“THE ABC IS CHANGING….oh…the MMA judging…No, no, that’s cool too…”

As some of you may know, I am working towards my master’s degree when I’m not writing for Cage Potato and currently preparing to defend my thesis. Because of this, I have been dragged into more semantics arguments than a person should ever admit to. I’ve had to defend every little “a” that could have been a “the” with Griffinesque tenacity - and I haven’t even defended the damn thing yet. Anyone who has ever attended graduate school can sympathize.

So when The Association Of Boxing Commissions (ABC) announced their newest revisions to the MMA Judging criteria at their annual conference, I read the document with skepticism. The fact that one of the new revisions removed the word “damage” from the scoring criteria partially so that opponents of MMA sanctioning can no longer point to the rulebook and say “LOOK, DAMAGING YOUR OPPONENT IS A RULE!” didn’t exactly help matters. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that some of the rule changes are actually pretty damn important.

(We’re on your side, Joe, but blowing up Cecil Peoples’ house might have been taking it a little far.) 

It may be old news at this point, but the UFC’s recent trip to Florida, though rife with entertaining fights and exciting finishes, was basically a clusterfuck of refereeing and judging incompetence. MMAFighting’s Mike Chiappetta wrote a very thorough article detailing all of the things that went wrong that night, but here’s the basic run down for those of you who don’t like to have all of those pesky words get in the way of your reading:

-The Henry Martinez vs. Bernardo Magalhaes fight was originally scored a UD win for Martiniez, but was later changed to a split decision when the scorecards were looked over again.

-The Mike Pierce/Carlos Eduardo Rocha fight ran into the opposite problem. It was originally scored a SD for Pierce, a notion that was responsible for more blown minds than the ending of Saw. It took the judges some four days to realize that it was actually scored a unanimous decision for Pierce.

-Lance Benoist was able to illegally strike Seth Baczynski twice without being deducted a point.

-For some reason, the referee in the Jared Papazian/Dustin Pague fight told Papazian to “keep his feet off the cage” whilst he was attempting to push off and escape Pague’s submission.

-Tim Means, on the other hand, nearly beat Justin Salas to death before the ref decided to step in.

Aside from all of this, the commission also managed to drop the ball twice at the pre-fight weigh-ins, incorrectly announcing the weights of both Means and Benoist before realizing their errors. But we’d specifically like to focus on the staggering inadequacy of the judges. Because judging, unlike any other occupation, is seemingly non-performance based. Time after time we’ve seen the same familiar faces make royal asses of themselves on the job, always to find the same job waiting for them come Monday morning.

But thankfully, MMA’s patron saint of subjectivity, Joe Rogan, is here to lay it on the line for these inept jackasses who seem to be actively trying to ruin the sport.

(Brazilian boy can’t get no love? / Props: enlapelea.com)

Fabio Maldonado should have learned his lesson in his fight against Kyle Kingsbury last June — if the judges refuse to count body punches as “effective damage,” you might as well just start head-hunting and grunting and hope for the best. Once again, the Brazilian light-heavyweight put on a body-shot clinic in his bout against Igor Pokrajac at last night’s UFC event, and once again he wound up with a unanimous decision loss, with one judge inexplicably handing all three rounds to the Croatian. Many observers called this one a robbery, and you can understand why if you look a little closer at the striking totals. According to FightMetric…

- Round 1: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 36-6 in significant strikes, 47-16 overall.

- Round 2: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 26-13 in significant strikes, 60-18 overall.

- Round 3: Maldonado out-landed Pokrajac 36-17 in significant strikes, 59-30 overall.

- Overall: Maldonado’s success-rate for significant strikes was 72% (98 of 137), compared to 45% for Pokrajac (36 of 80). The final overall striking total was 166-64 in Maldonado’s favor.

CagePotato Roundtable is our new recurring column in which the CP writing staff and some of our friends all get together to debate an MMA-related topic. Joining us this week is former CagePotato staff writer Chad Dundas, who now writes for an up-and-coming blog called ESPN. If you have a suggestion for a future Roundtable column, send it to tips@cagepotato.com.

CagePotato reader Alexander W. writes: “The Demetrious Johnson vs. Ian McCall fight inspired my suggestion: Greatest robberies in MMA history. I’d be curious to hear the variety of opinions out there. Surely that fight was a top ten.”

Chad Dundas

There are a lot of things about Pride Total Elimination 2003 that don’t make sense when viewed with modern MMA sensibilities. How to even comprehend a world where a skinny, haired-up, suit jacket-wearing Dana White could bet Pride bigwigs $250,000 that Chuck Liddell was going to win that company’s 2003 middleweight grand prix? Or comprehend that a bizarrely dangerous and clearly-enunciating Liddell showed up in the first round of said tournament and KTFOed an impossibly svelte Alistair Overeem? Or that Overeem had an old dude in a robe and shriners hat accompany him to the ring while carrying a big foam hammer? Or that on this night somebody got tapped out with a sleeve choke? Or that Wanderlei Silva fought Kazushi Sakuraba and it didn’t just make everybody feel sad and empty?

No sense at all.

What does still sort of make sense is this: After watching Liddell sleep Overeem, there was no way on God’s green Earth that Pride judges were going to let another UFC emissary walk out of Saitama Super Arena with a win*, so they conspired to pull off one of the greatest screwjobs in MMA history when they awarded Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira a unanimous decision over Ricco Rodriguez. The indisputable fact is, Ricco whipped Big Nog good that night, taking him down, brutalizing him, shaking off his feeble submission attempts and controlling pretty much the whole affair. At least, that’s how I remember it. Unfortunately, due to Zuffa’s ongoing war on Internet piracy it seems their bout will only be remembered by history and by the creepy old man who answers the queries you submit to the Sherdog Fight Finder.

If you’re only going to do one thing, make sure you do it well. (Photo: Getty Images/UFC.com)

It would be an understatement to call the UFC’s return to Japan triumphant. We could point to the bevy of exciting finishes as proof enough, but last night’s action seemed to go beyond that. More important to the evening’s success was the way the competitors fought. Surrounded by fans that appreciate the “bushido spirit” above all else, the fighters let it all hang out and battled their way through adversity. The Japanese prefer an entertaining performance over a cautious victory, and from the opening bout to the final bell of the evening, they got their money’s worth.

The final four combatants weren’t able to match the undercard’s highlight-reel stoppages, but the fighters knew the stakes and, to the best of their abilities, showed up to wow the fans.

(If Dana were to give an actual State of the Union, we imagine it would sound a little something like this.)

Now, I know I am going to take a lot of flack for writing this, but it’s good to see that UFC President Dana White is at least addressing our concerns when it comes to the clusterfuck that is MMA judging and refereeing. No matter what, or should I say, whose, side you took in the whole Diaz/Condit debacle, you probably agree that there need to be some serious changes made when it comes to choosing the winner of a given fight. And don’t even get us started on the Koscheck/Pierce decision.

The simple fact is that although the sport has evolved in leaps and bounds over the years, the matter by which it is judged has refused to change its mindset, like a stubborn old man who still believes that a mythical beast hustled him out of three dollars and fifty cents.

And while reffing will always contain a certain degree of human subjectivity (as with any other sport), MMA judges should be able to adhere to stricter, more definable rules than “aggression” and “octagon control,” which leave a lot of room for interpretation when it comes to deciding a close round. We’ve already put forth several options, and per usual, no one has returned our calls.

Anyway, join us after the jump for a transcription of DW’s inaugural “Presidential Address,” as well a snippet about his plans to bring the UFC to Hawaii.

“Come on, Nick. Tell us how you *really* feel.” (Video: ZombieProphet)

Though he fought in a cage only ten yards wide, Nick Diaz must have felt like he was fighting on a football field last night. For five rounds he stalked Carlos Condit but was unable able to pin him in any of the Octagon’s eight corners. In true Stockton fashion, he never stopped pressing forward and was always the aggressor, but did he exhibit ‘Octagon Control’? As we generally define the term, yes. As it’s actually defined, no. Diaz didn’t want to keep circling and chasing Condit; he wanted to trap him against the cage and unload merciless combinations–basically, to fight him in a phone booth. The reason he didn’t was because Condit executed his game plan perfectly and dictated the flow of the fight. Even if that wasn’t the case and Diaz was in full control of the bout, let’s not start pretending that we love nothing more than a fight full of ‘Octagon Control’. As fans we value effective striking and grappling above position and pace. So too should the judges.

By Mike Russell

We caught up with Carlos Newton briefly over the weekend in Toronto at the MMA Expo and the former UFC welterweight champion surprised us with the news that he has retired.

“I’m retired,” Newton explained. “The sport just isn’t as competitive as it used to be.”

Instead of focusing on preparing to fight inside the cage, “The Ronin” says he has turned his focus on fighting for proper regulation by the people who officiate both inside and outside of it.

“I’m just concentrating on helping to improve the regulation of the sport and I’m looking into becoming a judge. I think that as fighters we have a lot more knowledge and insight into the intricacies of what’s going on in a fight than someone who has never competed. MMA judging needs fixing and I’m hoping I can help do it.”

We got the following snapshot of one of the judge’s scorecards from Saturday night’s KSW 17 show from a reader today and we’re still trying to decipher what the hell it means.

(Smiling in the presence of a woman? Automatic one-point deduction. / Photo via Sherdog)

As sort-of hazily defined by Nick Diaz back in January 2010, the Unified Rules of Stockton is an alternate MMA scoring system in which the winner of the fight is the guy who would have won if the match had continued indefinitely, and the loser is the guy who looks more fucked up afterwards. Under Stockton Rules, only the final round is scored, and holding onto top position without doing damage actually counts for negative points.

The more commonly used ten-point-must system keeps things nice and uniform, and doesn’t require judges to predict the future. But as we’ve seen time and time again, the fighter who has more points on the scorecards isn’t always who you would call the “winner.” So which notable UFC fights would have different results if the scoring system was a little more gangster? Let’s get an obvious one out of the way first…

DAN HENDERSON vs. MAURICIO “SHOGUN” RUA
UFC 139, 11/19/11

(I’ll stop doing it when you stop laughing.) 

Lets face it, Potato Nation, the current face of MMA judging is nearly as bad as it’s original state of refereeing. And although some of the fault can be attributed to the judges themselves, there is no denying that the 10-point must system upon which nearly all of mixed martial arts competition is judged upon is in dire need of a change. How many decision’s have left us scratching our heads in this year alone? In fact, the very first fight card of the year, which took place on New Year’s Day mind you, ended in the controversial draw between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard. You can’t make this stuff up.

It’s easy to sit back and take pot shots at those in the spotlight, and let’s be honest, it’s kind of what we’re known for. But not today. Today we move from “identifying the problem” to “finding the solution” so that maybe in the future we can say we made even the smallest of differences in the world. (Take that, Wall Street protesters.)

Jimmo dominates the pre-fight staredown. We’re talking 10-7.5 dominance.

Sometimes an idea comes along that’s so stupid that society adopts it just out of curiosity. YAMMA Pit Fighting, Canned bacon, XARM- things that supposedly solve a problem that someone is having somewhere, but are essentially useless to everyone else. So when Doc Hamilton introduced his half-point scoring system after Machida’s controversial decision over Shogun Rua at UFC 104, which essentially said that judges should score close rounds 10-9.5 instead of 10-9, it was just a matter of time before someone said “Hey, maybe he’s right about this whole judges not working with fractions thing”. If last night’s MFC 31 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada , which utilized the half-point scoring system that Doc Hamilton proposed would improve MMA judging, taught us anything it was that half-point scoring is just as flawed as whole point scoring.

Case in point: Last night’s main event saw a controversial unanimous decision victory awarded to former Cage Potato guest blogger/current Maximum Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion Ryan Jimmo over Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou. Overall, the fight barely had more action than the weigh-in, as neither fighter seemed eager to engage with- yet alone finish- his opponent. However, Jimmo was clearly the aggressor in the championship rounds, and ended up taking the fight by scores of 49-48.5 (x2) and 49-48. The fight marks Jimmo’s sixteenth straight victory.

For your sake, I hope you’ve been good this year.

The year is half way over. Days are longer, flip-flops and shorts have replaced boots and pants and yet, the smell of chestnuts roasting on an open fire remains as strong as ever. That can only mean one thing – Christmas in July! Most of you couldn’t care less about another holiday you don’t get off from work, but what if I told you this one was special in that you can make a wish list for Wandy Claus and he’ll give you what you want if you’ve been good all year? You have been good this year, right?

On behalf of MMA fans across the globe, I’ve complied a Christmas in July wish list that, if fulfilled, would bring peace on Earth and good will toward man – or at least would appease a large majority of fans of a fringe sport. Click below to see what made the cut and bash me in the comments for not including your idea.

(Celementi’s post fight interview with Sweden’s answer to Ariel Helwani)

I can think of a few good reasons that last weekend’s Superior Challenge 7 card may have slipped of our radar. With the juggernaut that was UFC 129 dominating the MMA landscape at the time, former UFC fighters vying for mostly-irrelevant titles in a far away land just didn’t seem to matter too much. Fast forward one week and things get slightly more interesting.

As this event marked the first time that the Unified Rules would govern MMA bouts in Sweden, one might have expected a smooth night fights set to the harmonic backdrop of “The Sign”. However, following decision losses in their respective title bouts, Jeremy Horn and Rich Clementi have officially filed protests with the Swedish Mixed Martial Arts Federation to have the results of those matches overturned.

It’s been less than a month since Ricardo Almeida announced his retirement from MMA competition, but so far, it seems to be treating him pretty well. Though nobody likes to go out on a loss, Almeida recognized it was time to hang it up. As he says in this revealing new video profile from Veazy Street Productions:

“I have a lot of things going on outside of my fighting career — my family, I have a jiu-jitsu school to take care of, I train other fighters — so perhaps I felt like I wasn’t giving 100% to everything and doing everything I could. To be in the Octagon not 100% focused, to be in there not giving 100% of everything that you have is a dangerous thing…I just felt that after the loss to Pyle it just pushed me a little lower on the ladder. I felt it was going to take too much time to climb back up. I can’t say that if I had won, that I would be retired…

I didn’t want to wait until I got knocked out 4-5 times in a row for people to tell me that I should quit. I wanted to walk out of it happy, I wanted to walk out of it healthy, I wanted to walk away with love, and I think the next step is to focus on myself as more of a diplomatic approach of being a coach, being an instructor, and being able to focus on my family.”

(It’s like they say, Leonard: You win some, you win some.)

Good news for fans of competent scoring — according to Marc Ratner, the UFC has formally submitted a request to the Nevada State Athletic Commission to provide monitors for the judges assigned to score the bouts at UFC 130: Edgar vs. Maynard 3 (May 28th, Las Vegas). Up until now, California has been the only state to ever provide monitors for judges while scoring MMA bouts. I love this part:

When MMA Fighting asked NSAC Executive Director Keith Kizer if he would be open to the idea, Kizer replied, “Maybe.”

Great, Keith. As long as it doesn’t inconvenience you. The use of monitors in MMA judging is a common-sense addition that we’ve been whining about since Machida/Rua 1. It seems that the availability of multiple angles and close-ups would help judges evaluate action that they might otherwise miss from the fixed position and sight-line that their seat affords. However, not all judges agree that watching a fight on a screen is better than watching it play out in front of their eyes…

(No really, if you squint you might think he is *is* Dana White. Pic: ProMMANow)

In general, we feel like the following situation happens a lot in MMA circles: A guy will do something kind of shitty or controversial – thereby causing a minor internet eruption – and then in his effort to “explain” or “clear the air” or “apologize” he comes out with a bunch of statements that actually make the initial infraction seem much worse. Such is the case with MMA judge Chuck Wolfe, who this week tried to clarify to MMA Fighting the inexplicable 30-27 win he awarded Joe Warren over Marcos Galvao last weekend at Bellator 41. In doing so, Wolfe actually made a string of comments we found far stranger than the decision itself.

The veteran judge’s defense of how he scored the bout essentially proceeded along three tracks: One, he knows more about this than you do. Two, that MMA judges have to score the fight for somebody, right? And three, the fighters shouldn’t have left it in the hands of the judges. All pretty scary stuff, once you really start to think about it. All told, it just kind of makes you want to politely nudge Wolfe and say, “Chuck. Just, you know, shut up.” After the jump, you’ll find the quotes themselves. Be prepared to get mad.

It looks like he punched him out, woke him up, and then punched him out again, all inside of two seconds.  Damn, playa.

Well kids, it’s another lazy Sunday, and another look back on Bellator’s last card, conceived and executed for maximum entertainment. Bjorn Rebney and company pour their hearts and souls into each season, and if something goes wrong, there’s only one party to blame: the terrorists. Bellator 41 popped off under the desert sun in Yuma, Arizona yesterday, and we’re tempted to call this a mistake — an outdoor event in the harsh late afternoon sun, where it’s 99 degrees in April? Sure, it sounds harsh and perhaps cruel to the fighters who spent Thursday and Friday purging any spare liquids out of their bodies, but anyone believing that just can’t grasp the next-level meta-thinking that goes on inside Bellator HQ. There’s a higher purpose here, and we’re just too pedestrian in our thinking to follow it.

Something else we cannot always understand is the logic that MMA judges apply when filling out their cute little “official scorecards”, which are apparently legally binding even when no one on the planet agrees with them. We’ve seen this phenomenon before at all levels in every promotion, but it still never fails to incite much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the common MMA fan, including calls for the promotion’s owner to fire the judges involved. For the last time, guy at the bar who tranes UFC: the judges are not employed by the organization, they are meant to be fair and impartial employees of the state’s athletic commission. That judges occasionally seem to be drunker than a cricket in a hubcap cannot be blamed on Scott, Dana, and Bjorn. You blame that on stupid.

Come on in past the jump and we’ll fill you in on last night’s televised card, and discuss the latest “worst decision EVAR”.

(Is that a thumbs-up, a hang loose or a 2-out-of-10? We already have a problem here, Ricardo. Pic: MMA Convert)

Suck on this, F. Scott Fitzgerald: Recently retired MMA veteran Ricardo Almeida has apparently wasted little time starting the second act of his fighting life, as Pro MMA Radio’s Larry Pepe reports via tweet that “The Big Dog” will become a licensed judge in New Jersey. Obviously, the immediate reaction to this story is, “Hey, that’s great.” It’s good to see Almeida appearing to make a seamless transition to the next phase (one that baffles so many professional athletes) and it’s nice that he’s looking for ways to stay involved in the sport after hanging up his gloves. Since MMA is still, ahem, technically illegal in the state where Almeida resides, it’s also super cool and neighborly of Jersey to give him a chance. The Dirty Jerz has always fancied itself a forward-thinking athletic commission, so this is a good fit for it as well.

Let us say right off that we have no problem with Almeida the specific man/fighter becoming a judge. He’s always seemed like an agreeable sort and we have no doubt he’ll do a great job. But after the initial warm and fuzzies of this particular story wore off, we were left with some questions. Lots of questions, actually. For starters: Is having newly retired fighters become ringside officials really such a hot idea? Doesn’t it sort of set the stage for some clear cut conflicts of interest?

(Hey Diego! A Japanese Macaque called! He wants his distinctive coloring and eerily human-like appearance back! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Photo courtesy of Tracy Lee/CageWriter)

Whether it was out of true admiration for a fantastic fight or guilt about the controversial decision, Dana White and the UFC made sure that Diego Sanchez and Martin Kampmann were well compensated for their main event performance last night at UFC on Versus 3, which ended in a unanimous 29-28 decision for Sanchez after three gory, action-packed rounds. While the event’s other bonus-winners — Shane Roller (Knockout of the Night) and Brian Bowles (Submission of the Night) — took home $40,000 bumps, Sanchez and Kampmann were first told that their Fight of the Night bonuses would be $60,000, before DW reportedly added another $100,000 each to their checks. So that’s $400,000 in total end-of-night bonuses, for an event that only collected $471,450 in gate receipts. Sometimes you just do it for the love, I guess.

As for that decision, which was troubling to many (myself not included), FightMetric did the math and decided that Kampmann should have won the fight 29-28 due to number of strikes landed and overall effectiveness. Of course, the criteria that computerized scoring systems use is often much different from the ones used by human judges, for better or worse.

(Apparently, leaving your face open for repeated blows means you’re "dictating the action." Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

So another Leonard Garcia fight is in the books, which means it’s time to ask the judges, once again: Are you guys totally blind, or just legally blind, so that, you know, you can make out shapes and degrees of light, that kind of thing?  

Garcia’s split-decision victory over Nam Phan at Saturday’s TUF 12 Finale elicited immediate chants of "Bullshit!" from the Las Vegas fans, as well as a lengthy anti-NSAC rant from Joe Rogan. Did the judges see something we didn’t? Am I just biased by the fact that Phan is a likable underdog, and Garcia’s striking is an aesthetic nightmare that I can’t stand watching?

Well, no, as it turns out. According to FightMetric’s report on Phan/Garcia, the match should have been scored a 30-27 for Phan based solely on statistical effectiveness. Phan landed more "significant strikes" in every round, with only the first round being close (33-30 significant strikes in Phan’s favor). The second round was an obvious runaway for Phan (34-13 in the s.s. department, with a brief knockdown via side-kick) and the third was also a clear win for Phan (35-21). The only advantage Garcia had was his two takedowns (one apiece in rounds 2 and 3), neither of which led to any real damage.

(Props: CompuStrike via BloodyElbow. Click for larger version.)

Just because there were no major screw-ups during Saturday’s Strikeforce show, doesn’t mean they didn’t get a couple of minor details wrong. Case in point: the CompuStrike numbers that came back after the Diaz vs. Noons main event. Was anybody else shocked to learn that KJ Noons actually outstruck Nick Diaz 310-194, and landed a full 51% of his strikes? It seemed to us that Diaz was controlling the standup exchanges pretty clearly. As it turns out, CompuStrike incorrectly reported the strike totals from the fight, due to a "glitch" in their system; the real totals are above. There, now you can rest easily knowing that the decision was fair and your eyes did not deceive you.

Now, moving onto judging errors…

(Two entirely appropriate responses to the judges’ verdict. PicProps: Our Man J-Dawg)

Besides an affinity for horrifying Oregon Ducks gear, there isn’t much to dislike about Evan Dunham. In fact, in the wake of UFC 119 you could say Dunham has positioned himself as sort of an “Anti-Frank Mir” in MMA circles, emerging from his split decision loss to Sean Sherk looking like a winner, while the former UFC heavyweight champion emerged from his KO win looking like a loser. Given the near-unanimous public sentiment that Dunham got the “No Vaseline” treatment at 119, it will be interesting to see if the UFC simply ignores the amazing incompetence of the ringside officials on Saturday night and keeps the kid full-speed-ahead on his rise to a title shot.

Signs point to yes, as the always subtle UFC President took to his Twitter immediately after the official verdict to announce Dunham had been “robbed!” Meanwhile, Dunham himself — if his recent postfight with MMA Junkie is any indication — seems to be taking a far pluckier approach to his first professional loss.

("Wrestling should be a means to an end…You should be taking guys down so you can ground-and-pound the living piss out of them." Photo courtesy of the UFN 22 Weigh In Pics gallery on CombatLifestyle.com.)

If Cole Miller‘s match against Ross Pearson at tonight’s UFC Fight Night 22 event is boring, it won’t be Cole’s fault. The lightweight standout prides himself on being an exciting fight-finisher, and has stopped three of his last four opponents by submission. Miller was a guest on the latest installment of CagePotato’s Bum Rush Radio Show, and gave us an earful about the growing trend of point-fighting "underachievers" in MMA and why judging in the sport sucks so badly. Check out an excerpt from Miller’s segment below, and please subscribe to The Bum Rush Show on iTunes!

CAGEPOTATO.COM: I just saw your interview with BJPenn.com, where you referred to Frankie Edgar as a "bouncy wrestler type" who doesn’t try to finish, and is content to just stick and move and score the occasional takedown for points. Was Frankie dominating BJ Penn really not that impressive to you?
COLE MILLER: No, I thought it was very impressive. I don’t think you can say anything about his skill set. It’s just more like, I look back at his past fights — and it’s not so much Frankie Edgar, it’s just a trend with all weight classes and all these fighters — and it’s becoming more like boxing where these guys are just trying to do enough to win the round. "Let’s do just enough to get by. Let’s get that 10 points. And then let’s get that 10 points again. Oh, I’m up two rounds to none? Man, let’s just ride this out. Let’s just survive and do enough to just stay competitive, and man, I got that 29-28 at the very least."

It’s like, that’s really what you came here to do? And I’m not talking so much about Frankie [in] this second BJ fight. I’m just using him as an example because it was a recent fight and he’s a guy that has a lot of decisions on his record. Man the guy can really box, the guy’s got awesome boxing, he’s got good footwork, he definitely comes in shape, and he didn’t look like a slouch on the ground, he’s very well rounded, so to say that you’re not impressed with somebody, especially a champion, I think that’s kind of silly…it’s more like the mental approach to fighting. I just think that guys should have more of a finishing outlook on fights. Doing enough to just get by, that’s not something that’s looked well upon.

You look at boxing, why is MMA outdoing it on pay-per-view for the most part? It’s not because people can appreciate the takedowns and the ground game all that much more, even though the general population is becoming more and more educated, it’s because people like to see fights finished. Boxing was not getting the knockouts and you weren’t seeing these devastating knockouts like you used to, and people stopped buying the pay per views because the general public doesn’t want to see 36 minutes of two guys both trying to do enough to win the rounds and get that 10, and get that 10, and get that 10….

("Let’s have a good, clean fight, protect yourself at all times, and don’t leave it in the hands of the judges. Trust me on that one." Photo courtesy of MMAFighting.com.)

Yes, the lightweight title fight between BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar at UFC 112 was close through all five rounds, and we’re not going to launch into the corny argument that a challenger should have to definitively "beat the champ" to earn a decision victory. But when the judges’ scores came back for that fight, we were a little shocked by the 50-45 tally that Douglas Crosby turned in for Frankie, especially since Penn pretty clearly took the first round, probably deserved rounds two and three, and the only round that was obviously Edgar’s was the fifth.

Responding to the uproar from Penn fans, Crosby created a thread on the UG — humbly titled "The JUDGING GENIUS returns from the Middle East" — to explain his interpretation of the fight. Well, not so much explain as rant incoherently and endlessly, making the forum posters increasingly furious. Crosby’s manifesto, compiled by FightOpinion, is after the jump; please note that these words were produced by an actual professional MMA judge chosen by the UFC. Read on if you dare…

(Well, clearly Machida is controlling where the post-fight celebrations are taking place.)

Following the UFC 104 title scrap between Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua, we were fairly shocked when the scores came back unanimously for Machida. Wasn’t Shogun the aggressor during the majority of the fight? Didn’t he land more strikes? When it came time for the judges to explain themselves, we learned that leg kicks don’t end fights, so you might as well not count them at all. But at least one judge from that night is having a crisis of conscience. From Yahoo! Sports (via Fightlinker):

Besides the addition of TV monitors, Hamilton is also in favor of tweaking the 10-point-must scoring system:

So, two things…