The 10-10 Round

By: Antonio Cooper
@AntonioCooper88
June 2, 2014

As a MMA fan 1st and a Journalist 2nd. I have to question what happened to the idea of a round being scored 10-10. It's one of those things that's rare and even tougher to judge but it's also an aspect within MMA that's necessary within their moments.

While a 10-10 round isn't necessary to occur within every fight, there are moments where the round is necessary to occur every now and then.

Personally I haven't seen a 10-10 round in a long time but there are moments where a 10-10 round should occur, a strong late example of this is Brown vs. Silva round 1 where both fighters had their moments and the round could have been perceived as more than even when it was all said and done.
How do you all feel?

I agree...

There should be more 10-10 rounds... and when we do the round by round scoring in live threads, I give 10-10 rounds every once in a while... but I know I'm not as liberal with 10-10 rounds as I feel I should be.

I think that's because I'm always trying not to give a 10-10 round... and find that one fighter who had the advantage somewhere in the round, so there's less of a chance of scoring the fights draws.

I also think there should be more 10-8 rounds scored as well.

I created and added a graphic to the 1st post.

Nice, thank you very much. And yea, 10-8 should happen as well. I've seen some brutal rounds that get 10-9 which is absolutly insane when you think about it.

Yeah man... if only the scoring in MMA was as clear cut as it is in boxing, maybe we wouldn't have as many dreadful decisions due to abysmal scoring by the judges.

We've spoken about the issue with judge's scoring on several shows.

I think a 10-10 round should be given a little more often. If neither fighter showed a clear edge in a round, go ahead and make it 10-10, rather than giving a fighter a gift he didn't earn.

I agree with Rich that if a fighter dominates a round thoroughly (Think along the lines of Velasquez vs. Dos Santos II and III) but doesn't knock him down, that should be a 10-8 round.

But Rich.... Boxing has had its share of ridiculous decisions, too. I hold up Hagler vs. Leonard as a glaring example.

Oh yeah, no doubt... but at least in boxing every time an opponent gets knocked down, it's clearly a loss of a point which makes things a bit easier when scoring.

That makes it a bit more difficult to have erroneous scoring... that's what makes scoring in MMA so difficult, since the scoring is somewhat subjective based on who's doing the scoring.

I think 10-10 rounds could mess the judging up even worse. They are rare, and they should be. 10-8 as well. Unless a guy clearly dominates, then a 10-9 is warranted. Although having these scores more often might actually make fighters try to finish more.

 

Bumping up Antonio's threads from the "MMA Chat Articles" forum.

In the Kyle Kingsbury vs. Patrick Cummins fight we saw a more liberal use of the 10-8 scoring by a couple of judges.

 since there's a lull in action before the next event.