Brendan Schaub encourages fighters to take action following latest MMA judging debacle – Boycott UFC 300
Brendan Schaub is the latest to weigh in on the latest MMA judging crisis.
Having fought eleven times in the UFC from 2009-2014, Schaub can sympathize with fighters who incompetent judges wrongly screw over.
The latest controversy comes from the UFC Vegas 74 headliner, which saw Amir Albazi score a split-decision victory over Kai Kara-France. Despite the vast majority of fans, fighters, and analysts believing that Kai-France should have got the nod, two of the judges’ scoring the fight scored it for the Iraq-born athlete.
The two judges who scored the contest for Albazi, Sal D’Amato and Chirs Lee, have since come under enormous amounts of criticism. Among them were UFC middleweight champion and team-mate of Kara-France, Israel Adesanya, who thinks’ some judges are ruining the careers of some athletes.
Brendan Schaub on state of MMA judging
To stop judges from significantly impacting the careers of fighters, Schaub feels it’s up to the fighters themselves to campaign for change. During a recent episode of The Schaub Show, Schaub suggested one approach fighters could take to make a real stance on judging in MMA.
“There has to be something we can do here,” Schaub said. “You can do what the SAG writers and just protest…what you do is rally the troops, do it before the big event, UFC 300, the week of…’ Guess what? Unless there’s a change, we aren’t fighting. ‘… If the fighters decided to put their foot in the ground, two days and things would change.”
Quotes via MMA News
Considering the sport is still fairly new in comparison to sports such as boxing, an union by and for the athletes still hasn’t been developed. However, with topics like fighter pay, healthcare, and now judging, it might not be long until we witness the formation of an athlete-led union.
A quick fix for the erratic judging has been met with the proposals of open scoring. Although the open-scoring approach doesn’t solve the in-fight scoring, it gives the fighters an insight into where they stand in the fight.
UFC 300 will go down next year, and the event will likely be stacked with monumental names to celebrate such a milestone in the promotion’s history. That said, Schaub sees a perfect opportunity for the fighters to step up and demand change.
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