Yao Zhikui vs Nolan Ticman, who won the fight?

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Who won the fight?

  • Yao Zhikui

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Nolan Ticman

    Votes: 3 100.0%

  • Total voters
    3

Stephen J Rivers

Active Member
Mar 14, 2015
52
98
It was a horrific decision. Based on the criteria and guidelines judges are given for scoring fights, they clearly got it wrong. Zhikui landed 12 strikes in the fight. 12!
 

Zeph

TMMAC Addict
Jan 22, 2015
24,355
32,125
It was a horrific decision. Based on the criteria and guidelines judges are given for scoring fights, they clearly got it wrong. Zhikui landed 12 strikes in the fight. 12!
It was one of those decisions where I believe they got it completely wrong, but I can understand why the gave the decisions they did. Ticman was circling for far too long, at one point almost doing a complete 720 round Zhikui without any strikes being thrown, which is just ridiculous. I don't believe Rafael Cordeiro and Kings MMA wanted him to circle that much.
 

Stephen J Rivers

Active Member
Mar 14, 2015
52
98
It was one of those decisions where I believe they got it completely wrong, but I can understand why the gave the decisions they did. Ticman was circling for far too long, at one point almost doing a complete 720 round Zhikui without any strikes being thrown, which is just ridiculous. I don't believe Rafael Cordeiro and Kings MMA wanted him to circle that much.
I understand your point, but I think that too often we do this. We take a bad decision and then we start excusing the judges by heaping the blame onto the fighter. "The fighter backed up too much"... "judges don't like that kind of style".... "not all judges like legkicks"..... "the other guy was throwing more"...... things like that, when in reality it's just bad judging. The fighter doesn't need to change his style, the judges need to get it right.

There is nothing in the rules or judging guidelines that suggests any judge should be scoring that fight for Zhikui, and they are not supposed to just insert their own opinion on what makes someone a winner. The more we excuse judges after the fact, the more we're deflecting the source of the problem away from them.
 

Zeph

TMMAC Addict
Jan 22, 2015
24,355
32,125
I understand your point, but I think that too often we do this. We take a bad decision and then we start excusing the judges by heaping the blame onto the fighter. "The fighter backed up too much"... "judges don't like that kind of style".... "not all judges like legkicks"..... "the other guy was throwing more"...... things like that, when in reality it's just bad judging. The fighter doesn't need to change his style, the judges need to get it right.

There is nothing in the rules or judging guidelines that suggests any judge should be scoring that fight for Zhikui, and they are not supposed to just insert their own opinion on what makes someone a winner. The more we excuse judges after the fact, the more we're deflecting the source of the problem away from them.
I'm not excusing the judges or I wouldn't have made this thread, but recognizing a problem with the rules and their implementation by the refs. I know that refs can warn fighters for avoiding fighting too much, even taking a point away if the need arises, and this would have been a perfect fight to see the ref intervene in this way.

In Pride it would have been dealt with by the yellow card system, because they know this is a spectator sport, and that performance by Ticman doesn't have many people clamouring to see him again. There is a fine line that MMA needs to tread between sport and spectacle to be successful, and rewarding Ticman's performance veers too far into the sport element. We have stand ups on the ground for a reason, to ensure action, we need to ensure that refs know they can warn, and take points if needed, people stalling on the feet.

So while I am not excusing the judges by an means, I can understand their decision. Perhaps in the future if that is Ticman's game plan he will be docked points, and then a similar judges decision would be correct.
 

Stephen J Rivers

Active Member
Mar 14, 2015
52
98
While you say you're not excusing the judges, a lot of what you say in your post does divert attention away from them getting it wrong. If you can understand their decision, that is, at least in some way, excusing them and removing some (not all) of the blame. There are also implications that it's in some way the fault of the fighter.

Talk of other rulesets is irrelevant in terms of looking at whether the judges got it right on Saturday, because those other rulesets were not in place when the fight took place. That is a different debate. Should changes be made to the judging criteria? Sure, I personally think that a 10 point must system in a fight that has three, long, rounds is a ridiculous idea. Should referees be quicker to warn fighters when they are not trying to engage? In some instances, and Saturday was probably one of them.

But that has no bearing on whether this fight was scored correctly, because those other rulesets and judging criteria are not in place and the referee did not pro-actively go after Ticman or take a point away. If he doesn't take a point away for that, they don't get to do it themselves whether they think he should have or not.

It is not the job of the judges to get anarchic and start marshaling the excitement level of the sport, and I doubt even for a second that either of them were thinking, "well, this will teach him to engage more in future fights, this is good for the sport" when they were scoring the rounds. They are not there to judge how they think fights should be judged, they are there to follow definite guidelines and judging criteria and score each round based on that.

Every time there is a questionable decision we look for reasons and excuses for the judges. The ref didn't help them, the judging criteria isn't right, we think fights should be scored a different way, it was a close fight, it's the fighters own fault for having a certain style. All that stuff excuses them and diverts blame elsewhere, the judge's mistakes get lost among a sea of excuses.
 

Zeph

TMMAC Addict
Jan 22, 2015
24,355
32,125
While you say you're not excusing the judges, a lot of what you say in your post does divert attention away from them getting it wrong. If you can understand their decision, that is, at least in some way, excusing them and removing some (not all) of the blame. There are also implications that it's in some way the fault of the fighter.

Talk of other rulesets is irrelevant in terms of looking at whether the judges got it right on Saturday, because those other rulesets were not in place when the fight took place. That is a different debate. Should changes be made to the judging criteria? Sure, I personally think that a 10 point must system in a fight that has three, long, rounds is a ridiculous idea. Should referees be quicker to warn fighters when they are not trying to engage? In some instances, and Saturday was probably one of them.

But that has no bearing on whether this fight was scored correctly, because those other rulesets and judging criteria are not in place and the referee did not pro-actively go after Ticman or take a point away. If he doesn't take a point away for that, they don't get to do it themselves whether they think he should have or not.

It is not the job of the judges to get anarchic and start marshaling the excitement level of the sport, and I doubt even for a second that either of them were thinking, "well, this will teach him to engage more in future fights, this is good for the sport" when they were scoring the rounds. They are not there to judge how they think fights should be judged, they are there to follow definite guidelines and judging criteria and score each round based on that.

Every time there is a questionable decision we look for reasons and excuses for the judges. The ref didn't help them, the judging criteria isn't right, we think fights should be scored a different way, it was a close fight, it's the fighters own fault for having a certain style. All that stuff excuses them and diverts blame elsewhere, the judge's mistakes get lost among a sea of excuses.
I'm not trying to excuse the judges, I've stated multiple times they got the decision wrong, and have made this thread as part of a project to help catalog these issues. Here is the thread for the project if you'd like to check it out.

However, I am partialing out blame. I think the ref failed at his job in regards to how the rules are written now. If he had done his job and correctly warned Ticman then the fight would have been different, and the judges would have been in a different situation. I agree that in how the fight ended the judges were completely wrong in awarding the fight to Zhikui.

We should always be looking for ways to improve the whole process of a fight to ensure the best product is produced for the viewer, and rewarding a performance like Ticman's is not the optimal way, whether or not it is the correct decision with how the rules stand. This is not to say that the judges should have scored against him, but to say there is a problem with the process which would rightly award him the win, or at least allow him to carry on that game plan to completion. If the ref had intervened more, then it is likely the fight would have turned out differently, and we shouldn't excuse him of his failures, just because the judges failed as well.