Joe Rogan has been vocal about his concerns on the ‘poor judging’ at the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Last month, he urged the Nevada-based promotion to fire all its judges, following Max Holloway’s decision loss to Alexander Volkanovski, with one of the cageside judges scoring it 50-45 for the newly-crowned featherweight champion.
On Saturday night, controversies marred the UFC 247 fight card in Houston, Texas after Jon Jones survived a tough challenge from Dominick Reyes.
The mixed martial arts great retained his light heavyweight title after a cardiac five-round contest as the UFC judges scored 48-47, 48-47, and 49-46.
The center of criticisms on the main event bout result was the third scorecard submitted by Joe Soliz as he saw Jones winning four rounds against Reyes.
And once again, Rogan was furious about the ‘incompetent judging’ and the ‘poor scoring system’ in the UFC.
Incompetence
In the final minutes of the UFC 247 pay-per-view, the color commentator called out Soliz for his ‘insane’ scorecard, saying it was a show of disrespect to ‘The Devastator,’ who gave Jones a hell of challenge.
“I can’t argue about this enough. I can’t get angry enough,” Rogan said (transcript from MMA Mania).
“I’ve done it so many times. For anyone to think that was 4-1 Jon Jones, that person’s insane!”
“They’re insane. Dominick Reyes put on a hell of a fight tonight and to disrespect that performance by that kind of judging is insane.”
Amidst the controversy, Rogan reignited his calls for better scoring system, which, for him, should be done by former MMA fighters.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s one of the biggest sports in the world, it’s – in my opinion – the most exciting sports in the world.”
“Incompetent judging. Incompetent judging and a poor system.”
“If we got together the best minds in mixed martial arts and the best journalists and fighters and they tried to figure out a way that we could agree on a scoring system that makes more sense, it would be nice.”
Working Together
Continuing, Rogan added: “And clearly there’s a giant issue with people judging that really don’t understand martial arts,”
“They judge boxing. Boxing you’re dealing with two weapons. A variety of different ways to use them, but two weapons. With mixed martial arts there’s just so much more to it.”
Dominick Cruz, who also served as a commentator for UFC 247, suggested athletic commissions should work with people with knowledge of the sport to avoid this kind of issues.
”We need to work together with these commissions,” Cruz said.
“They gotta let us in. They won’t let us in. They want to control everything and that’s the issue. Why can’t we just work together towards one common goal of creating an amazing sport. “
“That’s what we need to do. And stop being separate commissions here, we’re here. No. We’re all one.”
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(Featured Image Source: Instagram/ Jon Jones and YouTube/ The Joe Rogan Experience)