John McCarthy thinks that one judge having a drastically different scorecard for an MMA fight compared to his colleagues isn’t always a bad thing.
The original UFC referee and MMA pioneer sees the scenario often, in which two judges agree on one scorecard, but the third counts it as something completely different.
That third judge is often chastised, but McCarthy argues that unorthodox fighters make it difficult to score fights. He used a UFC legend as an example to explain his case.
“No judge wants to be the odd person out, but sometimes I’m going to tell you the odd person out is the one that’s right,” McCarthy told MMA Junkie Radio. “You’ll see many times, it’s a close fight and you’ll see two judges going with one person because they’re flashier. They do things that look smoother, look cleaner as they’re throwing it.
“Remember Keith Jardine? Keith was herky-jerky in everything he did, but he was effective and he landed hard shots, and so a lot of judges wouldn’t give him the credit that he deserved in the fight based upon it just didn’t look good. It didn’t flow well, but he was effective, and so there are many times you’re going to see there could be that fight where the judge that’s the odd person out is actually the judge that got it right.”
An example where the odd judge out could have been right is during Ciryl Gane’s controversial split decision win over Alexander Volkov at UFC 310 earlier this month. Volkov was outraged by two of the judges scoring the fight the same way, 29-28 in favor of Gane, whereas judge Eric Colon had it 29-28 Volkov.
Judging is an issue that persists across all combat sports and not just MMA, but McCarthy is of the belief that the outlash over a particular scorecard can be misdirected.
Check out the video above to hear more from McCarthy on the state of MMA judging.
