UFC 119 *spoilers*

An interesting card, LOL. Some good fights, some awful ones, and some truly bad, WTF-are-they-thinking judging.

Mitrione vs. Beltran was a sloppy, if entertaining, brawl. Neither technique nor endurance was much in evidence, but a lot of heart from both guys was.

C.B. Dollaway vs. Joe Doerksen was maybe the best MMA groundfighting match I have ever seen. Non-stop sweeps, reversals and sub attempts, such that even people who couldn't normally care less about the ground game stood up and said "WOW!"

Melvin Guillard vs. Jeremy Stephens was fairly disappointing to me. The "new" Guillard, bereft of his normal devil-may-care aggression was not thrilling to watch, IMHO. Not sure how Guillard pulled out a victory, considering that Stephens peppered him with leg kicks throughout the entire fight. I won't go so far as to call it a robbery, as the fight was pretty close either way, but......dunno.

Sean Sherk vs. Evan Dunham was more of a robbery, IMHO (see here: http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2010/9/26/171...-vs-evan-dunham .) While I gave round 1 definitively to Sherk with takedowns - and a gruesome cut above Dunham's eye from an elbow that was lucky a doctor didn't stop it right there - from round 2 on it was all Dunham. No idea what the judges were thinking on that one. Sherk did show some truly incredible submission defense, escaping countless *serious* guillotine chokes from Dunham, to the point that Dunham gave up trying them, LOL. However, by round three, Dunham was using Sherk as a punching bag, landing strikes at will, including some nasty jumping knees that reminded me of how BJ Penn finished Sherk years ago.

Chris Lytle vs. Matt Serra. WTF was Serra thinking. Not one takedown or sub attempt. If I want to watch boxing, I'll watch boxing. Those guys are better at it, anyway.

Ryan Bader vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. OK, I'm not arguing the decision in particular - but 30-27? Huh? Who could possibly score round 2 for Bader? Paaass the dutchie on the left hand side.........

Mir vs. Crocop. Mir's standup looked very good, but his constant pressuring of CroCop to the cage and then doing nothing was bizarre, and reminiscent of his fight with Carwin. He was lucky that Mirko was so much smaller, otherwise I think it might not have gone as well for Frank. The knee KO was a good cap to a boring fight, though. Sad to see CroCop asking "what happened?" at the end.

I've given up trying to understand the scoring on these fights. A complaint that was a topic of discussion at my table that night is that the ring judges have little to no fighting background, and they don't seem to do the level of studying that is required in other sports. Add to that Joe Rogans increasingly irrelevant commentary, and how many drinks does he pound before they give him the microphone anyway? Dunham's cut man provided better commentary! The UFC organization is not giving the fighters the same level of dedication that the fighters give.

I think the problem is that the judging is ran by the athletic commission which is composed of guys who understand boxing and wrestling and usually don't have any clue about submission grappling or kickboxing, and what it means to really tie it all together into more of a realistic fighting situation and what matters in "real" fighting. These are guys who don't really care too much about mma I think. They are not interested in understanding new things. I imagine it will get better, mma is still relatively young compared to most combat sports and people will come to have a better understanding as time goes by and it becomes more and more mainstream and a household sport.

You have a former boxer and a former wrestler watching an mma fight that comes to a decision and you'll likely get two very different perspectives on who won. then if you bring in a jiu jitsu fighter who had studies thai boxing and freestyle wrestling you'll get another perspective, and it will be agreed with by experienced mma fighters and fans more so than the other 2.

Of course another issue which you can't really avoid is that some of them may be biased towards a particular fighter. The bottom line in is work really hard and being a good fight finisher.

Good point, but I think it will take getting former MMA into positions of judging and commentary to see any improvement.

I fully agree. Former fighters would be great for judging however they would have to ensure that they judge fights not involving fighters they have a personal connection to (such as from coaching or former training partners).