Mohegan Tribe Reportedly Provides Bizarre Document On MMA Judging To Bellator 282 Fighters

The judging criteria used to score rounds in MMA has been a hot topic of debate seemingly since the inception of the sport’s unified rules back in 2001. But there’s an ebb-and-flow to it – amplifying with a string of controversial decisions or proposed criteria changes and calming down when fight outcomes are clear and convincing.

Recent amplifications have come from a string of hotly debated split decisions: Ketlen Vieira over Holly Holm, Valentina Shevchenko over Taila Santos, and Carla Esparza over Rose Namajunas in the UFC, and Logan Storley over Michael Page in Bellator.

The collection of the sport’s state and tribal regulators, the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports (ABC), will discuss the current state of MMA judging and any potential changes to the criteria at its upcoming annual conference in late July.

In the meantime, one of those regulators – the Mohegan TribeTRIBE2
Department of Athletic Regulations – reportedly made an admirable attempt to help fighters better understand the criteria for being scored the winner of a round before they step into the cage to compete. The problem wasn’t the attempt itself, it was the content of the attempt.

According to MMA Junkie’s Nolan King, the Mohegan Tribe, who will regulate tomorrow’s Bellator 282 event, provided every fighter on the card the following document describing the judging criteria in MMA.

Rather than detail the actual criteria for winning a round (10-9), the document instead lists the criteria used by judges to determine if the round-winning fighter should receive an extra point; i.e., a 10-8 score instead of 10-9. The letter purports to show MMA’s judging criteria as what’s commonly known as the “Three D’s” – Damage, Dominance, and Duration. When the winner of a round is clear and a judge is deciding whether that fighter won by a “large margin,” the Three D’s are used to determine whether the judge has to score a 10-8 or “must consider” a 10-8 score.

But it’s misleading to suggest the Three D’s are used to determine a round winner. It’s also surprising coming from what’s commonly considered one of the premier regulators in the sport. The director of the Mohegan Tribe Department of Athletic Regulations, Mike Mazzulli, is also the current president of the ABC.

In actuality, the vast majority of MMA rounds are scored by a single criteria: Effective striking/grappling. End of story. While it’s theoretically possible for effective aggressiveness and fighting area control to be relevant judging factors, that would be “an extremely rare occurrence.”

As the legendary official “Big” John McCarthy noted at the 2016 ABC conference, “Striking and grappling make up the sport of MMA. Take out striking and grappling and all we’ve got is Dancing with the Stars.”

Yet the terminology “effective striking/grappling” is actually a regulatory code phrase for a single word: damage.

The term “damage” is used behind the scenes of the sport and in officials training sessions, but regulators prefer not to formalize the word in written documents for potential liability reasons. As noted in a 2012 ABC report, “legal considerations surrounding the term ‘Damage’ as a descriptor were given considerable weight and as such the committee felt that using the word ‘Damage’ may contribute to the potential for liability in the event of any litigation that commissions may find themselves involved in.”

The Mohegan Tribe’s effort to educate Bellator fighters as to how their rounds will be scored was admirable, and should be considered by other regulatory bodies and promoters in the sport. Though admirable as it was, it yet again fell victim to a seemingly never-ending epidemic of judging misinformation in MMA – from the World Series of Fighting completely ignoring effective striking/grappling in its description of the 10-Point Must System prior to WSOF 34 to long-time UFC commentator Joe Rogan recently not seeming to know that damage wins rounds in MMA while curiously suggesting that perhaps damage should win rounds in MMA.

So it’s pretty simple to understand and convey how MMA rounds are scored: Damage (or the official term “effective striking/grappling”). That’s it, just a single scoring criteria. The hard part is effectively implementing this scoring criteria in practice so that, as McCarthy once put it, we’ve got “everyone on board saying, ‘It’s close.’” Since making a strong push in 2016 to clarify how MMA rounds should be scored, the sport and its regulators have made commendable strides in that department.

The Mohegan Tribe’s reported document attempted to make another stride, but unfortunately fell flat. Mike Mazzulli did not respond to a request for comment.