Saturday Thoughts: Professional Fighting VS. Actual Fighting

I was reading the paper recently, something that I do only occasionally, and I stumbled upon an article arguing the pros and cons of different scoring systems for mixed martial arts sporting competitions. This struck me as reaching to a central problem in our culture- we want somebody else to decide.

Of the mixed martial arts competitions out there, the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is arguably the biggest. It uses a complicated judge run scoring system to determine what happens whenever there is no clear winner- which is often in recent years. This, however, was not always the case.

In the first several UFC competitions, there were no judges and- in fact- the competition trumpeted this as a positive thing. A doctor was at ringside and could stop the fight to prevent permanent injury. A refereee was in the ring to prevent illegal blows. A corner could throw in the towel for the fighter if they feared for his ability to defend himself. That was it. The fight went until a fighter was knocked out, tapped out, or the fight was stopped by one of the afformentioned officials for safety's sake.

The argument for judges, derives from the desire by TV producers to put a time limit on fights so as to prevent a fight from running outside the time alloted for the television slot. Once a time limit is added, there seems to be no way to avoid judges. And once judges are added, fighters can begin to work the clock and act aggressive rather than fight effectively in order to please the judges.

A simple solution would be to add the time limit; and then score both fights with a loss on their record if the fight goes the distance without a clear winner. The problem with this is that, domesticated culture wants a winner and doesn't like systems that are self-running. Domesticated culture needs to see oversight and managers and judges- these things validate our view that world needs to be managed and ruled.

Because after all, if things can manage themselves, "Oh my gosh, what will our Kings and Priests do?"