30-27? Women Judge Needs To Learn Her Place



That's right. Did you see last night's Strikeforce event? Josh Thomson fought J.Z in a 3 round decision.. While most sane people had it 29-28 Thompson, one judge decided to give the 3rd round to Thomson also, making it 30-27. That score was so bad, Josh Thomson himself called it out in his post-fight speech. Well, what do you know, she just happened to be a woman by the name of Susan Thomas-Gitlin. Just another in a long-line of bad MMA judging. Well I'm tired and frankly her kind needs to find their place.

That place is being in a seat next to Cecil Peoples at Judge School. What a ridiculous decision. I'm not going to turn this into a diatribe about judging as the MMA media whines enough about that. I just want to make two points. The first of which is that I kind of have 2nd thoughts about bad judging. In one aspect, if a fighter knows he can get screwed, in theory, he'd be less likely to let it get to the judges. It doesn't seems as though that is a strong enough deterrent. Plus, you don't want fighters that deserved to win getting screwed.


The second point is that there were some interesting comments at the last California State Athletic Commission meeting by referees and officials. "Doc" Hamilton stated that over the past 2 years there was "chaos" at the Commission office as officials were licensed, but had no knowledge of the sport.


Surprisingly, Cecil "Pieples" (as he is referred to) agreed. Imagine that. Herb Dean feels that current officials should be reevaluated to do MMA and that referees should have some knowledge of martial arts just so they know what to do in the cage. Jon Schorle (YES! That Jon Schorle, the one from the Lashley fight) suggested that the Commission be involved in the assigning of officials. He was backed up by a boxing promoter who thanks the Commission for not removing Schorle from a fight even though the sanctioning body recommended it. Local MMA promoter Roy Engelbrecht said that the "quantity of officials is not important but the quality is". He also recommended that officials be evaluated at each event. I agree.


So it's obvious that they are aware of the lack of good judges and referees in the sport. So what needs to happen? Those that want it to be fixed need to put pressure on the necks of the officials.