Johny Hendricks Beats Up GSP, Gets Screwed by UFC Judges

by Dr. Octagon, J.D.

UFC 167 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Saturday night marked the 20th anniversary show for The UFC. 20 years, and apparently they still haven’t figured out this whole judging situation.

What looked like a pretty clear victory for Johny Hendricks in the main event turned into a split decision win for welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre. Some will say it was a close fight, but it didn’t look close to me.  It looked like the most crystal clear 48-47 decision for the challenger that I’ve ever seen.

I’ll need to watch the fight again, but I thought Johny won rounds 1, 2 and 4, with round 3 clearly going to St. Pierre. Round 5 was close, but I gave it to St. Pierre. I don’t think MMA judging is corrupt (like it is in boxing), MMA is just harder to score.

But it’s still terrible that even in the most important fights, the MMA press and the judges watching the fight have completely different perspectives on what happened. Two of the judges had GSP winning the first round; from what I can tell, not a single journalist thought he won the round. Georges’ own corner didn’t think he won the first round. [[MORE]]

I’m don’t usually point at facial damage as a measure of who won a fight, but when one guy’s face is busted up horribly, the other guy looks like he just walked into the ring, it’s a pretty decent indicator. Georges’ striking didn’t affect Johny at all. There wasn’t a single moment in the fight when Georges landed a punch or a kick that looked like it hurt Johny at all. The judges need to take that into account, and they didn’t.

Now announcer Kenny Florian is apologizing for the judges. What a company man! Florian says damage doesn’t count in the unified rules. That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. A component of scoring under the unified rules is effective striking. What does effective mean? Does it mean the number of strikes connected, without any sort of regard for the power behind those strikes? We think not. This is mixed martial arts, not amateur boxing.

To put it another way, strikes that bust a man’s face open and stagger him are more effective than strikes that don’t. It’s despicable that Florian wouldn’t tell it like it is. Michael Bisping pillow punches apparently count as much as Dan Henderson haymakers in Florian’s version of the unified MMA rules. At least Daniel Cormier has the good sense to say that Johny won the first round.

In other news, the best welterweight of all time has vaguely announced that he is hanging up his gloves for an unspecified reason. Probably needs to further fortify his home against alien invasions. As far as I’m concerned, they should give Johny the belt. Johny Hendricks is the best welterweight in the world right now. What a bunch of bullshit.

At least Robbie Lawler won one for the USA.