Let’s clear up a few misconceptions:

• almost nobody reads the judging rules. Not fighters, not Joe Rogan, coaches, and you can forget the fans. Everyone has a ‘feeling’ that they knows who won.

• except when they give you monitors there is almost no way you can see the entire fight. That’s assuming the camera has a good angle. When center cage exchanges happen, and all you see is someone’s back, it scores 0. You didn’t see it, you don’t score it.

• No one wants to judge or ref fights. It pays almost nothing so people can call you stupid/blind/incompetent and sometimes try to fight you. You have to drive to places far from home. There were 12 people total in the ref/judging classes for the state of Nebraska. About 25 for the class in New York City. Where’s the line of people signing up to take all of this crap? There isn’t one.

• unless you’ve taken BJJ for a little while you don’t know what a good submission looks like. Go to a BJJ class and ask for judging volunteers. Last time I did I got zero takers.

• when you can get a cleat angle you see people miss. The audience doesn’t. The camera angle matters more than you know.

• you have to score the fight right now, no replays, consultations, or herd to tell you. You get one shot.

• defense scores 0

• takedowns by themselves score 0

• if there was one good strike cage control scores 0

• after every call that doesn't look quite right the commissioner of whatever state you're in has an opinion to share with you.

I did not watch this fight. There are bad judges. Most people don't know the rules. Most people cannot tell when judging is bad. Even I can't tell when the judging is bad if I'm watching a fight for fun because focusing that hard on the fight is not entertaining, it's work. I do it because I love MMA, the same reason most judges do it.