Big John McCarthy says refereeing and judging are improving, but still ****ed up!

[split decision]

Some candor from Big John, as you might expect. I wonder if Kim Winslow and Cecil Peoples are reading this?


'Big' John McCarthy: There's no excuse for poor judging in UFC

"Overall it is better now than it was in the past, by far," McCarthy said on Monday's edition of The MMA Hour. "But the problem is, we have so many more shows going on. There's a lot of things that are happening. There's some mistakes being made.

"When it comes to the judging, the biggest thing is, judging by nature is subjective. You look at a fight and you have a guy that throws a bunch of punches. One judge — we’ll say [it's] you — is looking at it, and you’re giving him credit, saying, ‘Wow, he’s really active.’ While I’m looking at it saying, ‘He’s not connecting.’

"When you’re looking at the UFC, there’s not a whole lot of excuses. You’ve got a monitor in front of you, so [even] when you can’t see, [you can still see]. That monitor gives them the ability to see a fight from a variety of angles, not just from the one they’re sitting at. And so there’s not a lot of excuses to say, ‘Well, I didn’t see that,’ when it comes to the UFC.

"I will [only] stand a fight up when it’s close to an even position,” McCarthy said. “If you’re in guard, or even half guard, and the action has stalled to the point, and I give you warnings [that] I need you to get busy and nothing really changes, you’ve shown me that you can’t do anything, I’m going to stop you. I’m going to restart you. But if you get to dominant positions, be it side control, mount, back, the only way in the world that I would ever stand somebody up out of that, and I’ve done it once — I tell this story, it’s Jeremy Horn – is if you go and clamp down and you’re the one stalling the fight because you’re not doing anything.

"You’ve got to have some compassion about how hard it is to do some of the things these [fighters] are trying to do, and doing it against a guy who knows what you’re trying to do. When you get guys in these mad scrambles and they’ll finally end up in a position on the ground, and you’ll see a referee come in and five second later [say], ‘Come one. Work.’ It’s like, ‘Jesus Christ, don’t you think they just did? Wouldn’t you be trying to get your heart rate back and breathe a little bit?’ You’ve got to be reasonable when you’re looking at things. Sometimes that’s what separates the referees that fighters want to have doing their fights compared to others, because they understand the complexities of what’s going on."

http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/2/18...judging-in-ufc

[ATroms]

You know what i always wondered...

Why not have refs at ringside do the judging? Like, they seem to alternate refs for every fight nowadays anyways. So the ones who arent reffing that particular fight, sit them at ringside and let them judge.

Just thinking out loud here..

[niniendowarrior]

I don't think it fixes anything. Cecil Peoples refs and judges and you want Kim Winslow to start judging fights?

[Ash]

I agree with prettymuch everything he says, and he was 100% right when he called that dickhead Keith Kizer out years ago. Kizer is a cancer upon that sport that not only allows these blind as a cock judges to blow decisions, but insists on his very life that these are the best and most qualified people for the job. It's bull**** and everybody knows it.

I have mixed feelings on reffing. Yeah, a lot of refs are horrible and seemingly do whatever the crowd or the fighter doing the most complaining wants them to. On one hand, reffing MMA is really difficult. I think sometimes people dismiss how much you need to know about the sport and particularly jiu-jitsu to be good at the job. I've reffed both kick boxing and MMA, and it's a difficult and stressful job at the low levels, let alone in front of millions of people. On the other hand, I have no doubt they haven't hired the best people for the job. You literally don't have to know a thing about MMA for the NSAC to give you a reffing assignment which is a mind boggling problem. Sadly, the same applies to judging MMA fights which is even worse for the sport.

[BulldogWrestler]

It's a best friends game. Kizer is a govt employee who has job security to infinity unless they start slashing budgets (the only real fear he has). He doesn't need to perform, because no matter how good or bad he performs - he's covered.