Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly the right time to ask Dana White about this after they just forgot how to count to 28 in Australia (come on, guys, it really isn’t that much harder than ” target=”_blank”>knifey spooney), but he has now officially come down against the implementation of the half-point scoring system in MMA fights. The mere mention of the half-point system was recently enough to send White into one of his vintage f*ck-laced tirades, recorded by MMAFighting.com’s Mike Chiappetta:
“We get into half-points? They better learn to count f—ing whole points before we get to half-points,” he said. “You put a half-a-point in there, holy s—, every f—ing card will be destroyed. It’s a bigger problem than half-points. And I don’t want to smash these guys, they accepted what they did and they were stand-up about it, but Jesus Christ, there’s three f—ing numbers. There’s 10s and 9s. If you can’t count 10s and 9s, let’s not throw f—ing fractions in there.”
White said that during his career of promoting over 1,600 fights, a similar scenario has only occurred one other time, and though he didn’t specify that instance, he’s most likely referring to a UFC 41 bout between Matt Serra and Din Thomas. In that event, Serra was originally declared the winner by majority decision, but a scoring error was later discovered and New Jersey state regulators corrected the mistake, giving Thomas the win.
“It’s the worst thing ever when you go back and you tell a guy, ‘I need to talk to you, you didn’t win this fight,’” White said. “The guy’s already made his f—ing phone calls, he’s already made plans. You think you won the fight and find out the fight’s a draw, or what would have been worse if I would’ve had to go back and tell him, ‘You lost the fight. You didn’t win.’
“That’s why tallying the scores and doing what they do is so important,” he continued. “Not only for all the selfish things for me, for the product and the sport and the brand and all that stuff, but these fighters… You literally have their lives in your hands. Get a f—ing calculator. You know what I mean? Do something. Take more time. Make sure that stuff is right.”
Sure, the half-point scoring system could end up producing lots of three-round draws due to one 10-9 round for one fighter stacking up against two 10-9.5 rounds for the other. But then, what’s to stop the UFC from putting a tiebreaker round (we’re not allowed to say “sudden death” anymore, thank you Rebellion Media) in all future fight contracts to break the impasse? Judging by how MMA fans were salivating like a pack of wild hyenas at the prospect of a fourth round during the McCall-Johnson flyweight tournament fight and then collectively gushed pus from an infected ulcer when they found out it was a mistake that they didn’t get it, tiebreaker rounds might not be such a horrible thing for the sport.