| Machida-Shogun decision |
[Oct. 25th, 2009|12:04 pm] |
I'm sure I'll get a comment or two asking my opinion on the fight, so here goes. While watching the fight, I thought Shogun won, either 49-45 or 49-46, but these things often seem different in the sober light of day than with the emotion of the moment involved. So here are my thoughts upon second viewing, with the volume on mute to avoid the bias of Rogan, Goldberg and the crowd:
Round 1: This round is a typical Machida round in that if you watch it uncritically, it looks like Shogun is the aggressor and is landing lots of stuff, but Machida actually manages to avoid a lot of it and take a lot of strikes on the arms. That said, aside from a couple of good knees and one good body kick, Machida doesn't land much himself. Shogun gets a number of shots off as well, landing to the body, legs and even the head of Machida. The clinch is pretty much a stalemate. I go back and forth between this being a 10-9 Machida round and a 10-10 round, but in the end it's simply not a decisive round so I'm going to settle on it being a 10-10.
Officially, this round was scored for Machida by Cecil Peoples and Marcos Rosales, and scored for Shogun by Doc Hamilton.
Round 2: This is Shogun's round, though hardly a blowout. It's pretty much a draw up until the last two minutes, where Shogun is able to finally find a home for that body kick multiple times. In this round you see a serious contrast of the point karate vs muay thai, and I don't just mean the stances: Machida is throwing to try to score and connect but lands very few heavy shots in the rounds, whereas Shogun is throwing everything to hurt. As you would expect, Machida lands more shots but Shogun lands the harder ones. 10-9 Shogun.
All three of the official judges scored this round for Machida.
Round 3: This is Machida's round. In this round his straight leff counter off the body kick is a thing of beauty to watch. In this round more than any, Machida is the one doing the stalking and getting off first. He snaps Shogun's head back a few times. Machida gets the best of the flurry towards the end of the round. This is the most decisive round so far. 10-9 Machida.
All three of the official judges scored this round for Machida.
Round 4: In this round, Shogun does his best work attacking the legs of Machida. There are a few exchanges where both guys land power shots. Like Round 1, this is a very close one. I think Shogun does enough to steal this round in the last 90 seconds. I can see an argument for a 10-10 round, but I call it 10-9 Shogun.
Officially, Cecil Peoples and Marcos Rosales scored the round for Shogun; Doc Hamilton scored it for Machida.
Round 5: I actually remember this round being more dominant for Shogun. He won it solidly, but again, it wasn't a blowout. But for the first time we see Machida being punched in the face repeatedly. Shogun dictates the pace of this round with his kicks. We see both guys get tired, but Machida definitely more so as he sort of loses the will to evade the strikes of Shogun and kind of half-heartedly parries a lot of them. 10-9 Shogun.
Officially, all three judges gave the round to Shogun.
So I have it 49-47 for Shogun. But Rounds 1 and 4 are close; if you give R1 to Machida and make Round 4 a draw, which are quite defensible, then you get a score of 48-48. Not any one single round was a blowout. So while I have a hard time being convinced Machida won three rounds, the thing is that this fight was not a robbery. It was a poor decision. I got the benefit of replays and slow-motion, and all the good camera angles, the benefit of ignoring crowd reactions, and all the things that the judges don't get. I am no fan of judging in MMA (especially because so many of them are just old boxing judges) but if you're looking for an indictment of it you probably have to go farther than this fight. [1]
The good news is we'll almost certainly get a rematch (provided both guys are healthy), and even after watching these guys fight for 25 minutes (twice!), I don't have any idea what will happen! I don't think most MMA fans were super-excited for this fight going in, but I can imagine there will be a lot more hype for the rematch. Although the crappy LA fans were booing the lack of crazy wild swinging flurries, I thought it was a good fight and I'm very interested to see what strategy adjustments both guys make for the next time.
The bad news is that I had Shogun at +380. :( Oh well, hard to complain when I had a pretty good weekend at poker.
[1] The people at Fightlinker make a valid counterpoint that even though the fight was close, virtually no one scored the fight in favour of Machida, other than the three judges. |
|
|
| Comments: |
Yeah, FightMetric is awesome. Always interesting and often surprising numbers there.
Velasquez was super-impressive. Was able to get takedowns and control at will and all without getting punched in the face repeatedly as against Kongo. He's definitely ready for the Carwin/Lesnar winner imo.
"virtually no one scored the fight in favour of Machida"
I missed it personally, but all reports that I heard said the same story.
"Machida lands more shots but Shogun lands the harder ones. 10-9 Shogun."
In old-school boxing (and I have no idea if this goes for UFC) you're *supposed* to get the round for landing more shots - it's a "sport" after all - than for landing the hard ones. That's the excuse they always give when the fans see it different from the judges.
Nope, that would contradict the official UFC rules: F. Clean Strikes
1. The fighter who is landing both effective and efficient clean strikes.
2. There are two ways of measuring strikes:
-the total number of clean strikes landed (more efficient)
-the total number of heavy strikes landed (more effective)Also, Peoples was quoted this morning thusly, which is pretty bizarre: The way I saw it, Lyoto was landing the more cleaner and damaging strikes throughout the fight - if you take a look at the judging criteria clean strikes are valued more-so than the quantity of strikes landed.Say whaaaa
I watched the fight at a bar with the sound turned off, so I had no idea what the score was when Machida was given the decision, but I wasn't really surprised it went 3-2 to him. In all honesty, after watching the fight I thought Machida was the clear winner, but after reading the concensus opinion of the masses the morning after, I may have been the only one who thought so.
Most of my opinion boils down to two very subjective points, one being that Machida was the only one who ever threatened to end the fight (during the flurry in the third round), and the old cliche that you have to beat the champ soundly if you want them to give you the belt. Shogun had a good game plan, and executed it well theorhetically, but I think we're all in agreement that it was underwhelming. "Not a robbery," as you put it, is probably the fairest way to objectively describe it.
Always enjoy the blog, by the way.
Sorry, but that's not how fights are scored in the UFC. Scoring is on the ten-point must system (like it or not), not on the entirety of the fight, so vague concepts like "threatening to end the fight" are only relevant within the context of any given round.
And I really dislike the "beat the champ" theory. I mean does the defending Super Bowl champion just get like an extra half yard on 4th down stick measurements? "Oh, they crossed the goal line, but really only barely, and you have to beat the champions, after all..."
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of the must system and otherwise how subjective my own reasoning for who won the fight ultimately turned out to be. My main point, which in looking back it appears I may have muddled thoroughly, was to suggest ways in which the minority of viewers, including myself and the three judges, could skew things so badly against the concensus. In my case, I think I got caught up in the quantity vs. quality argument for strikes, and I'm willing to admit I might have had a pro-Machida bias while watching, which is ironic because I'm really not a supporter of any 205 competitor in particular.
And you're right about the "beat the champ" double-standard, but fair or not, it seems to exist to some degree. It's a tricky business scoring something so subjective, I guess. Things are so much easier when there's a knockout involved.
I just watched the fight and I had it scored the same way as you, with the first round as a draw and 3 going to Machida, the rest to Shogun.
Man did Velasquez look good. He just overwhelmed Rothwell and Ben's only chance was to knock Velasquez out. Mazzegatti got it wrong, he should have stopped it at one point in the 1st round and then ended it early in the 2nd round...
On another note, it's too bad Strikeforce doesn't have anyone for Fedor to fight, though the other fights will at least be interesting.
Yeah, I kinda think the fight should have been stopped in the first as well. Overeem and Bigfoot Silva are interesting-ish matchups for Fedor after the Rogers fight. Then after that he'll be free of his 3-fight contract with Strikeforce. Lesnar's out of the November card with possibly the ol' swine flu though, so imagine how blue-balled we would have felt if the Fedor-Lesnar fight actually got signed. | |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
terrencechan's journal
