Griffin takes title from Rampage

July 6, 2008

A lackluster UFC 86 card was bailed out by a thrilling main event featuring Forrest Griffin against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson for the UFC light heavyweight championship last night.

Jackson entered the cage coming off wins over Chuck Liddell and Dan Henderson, but hadn’t faught in eight months and vowed after the fight to never let it happen again. Griffin, who choked out Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in his last fight, was trying to become the first Ultimate Fighter reality show winner without previous UFC experience to win a UFC belt.

The bout went five rounds  with Jackson knocking down Griffin with an uppercut in the first. Griffin returned the favor in round 2, using wicked leg kicks to chop Jackson down before dominating him on the ground. Griffin continued to pour it on in round 3 before Jackson mounted a comeback in the fourth. I had the fight even at two rounds apiece heading into the fifth round that I think Griffin barely pulled off. It could have gone either way and I was expecting possibly a draw or a split decision or someething along those lines.

Instead, Griffin was given the unanimous decision victory to become the new champion. Two judges scored the bout 48-46 while a third had it 49-46. Two judges must have given Griffin a 10-8 score in round 2 for his domination of Jackson to get a 48-46 result, but the third judge scored four of the five rounds to Griffin.

It’s another interesting judging decision as I can’t see how Jackson did not win rounds 1 and 4. In the fourth round, Jackson buckled Griffin twice, opened a cut over his eye, and took him down while Griffin didn’t come close to matching that. As for the 10-8 round, yes Griffin controlled Jackson the whole round and put him on the ground with leg kicks, but I didn’t see Griffin do much more than irritate Jackson more than anything by smothering his face with his forearm and elbow and landing elbows that weren’t anything crazy. Was that enough to be a 10-8 round?

Judging has become a big issue recently, which begs the question. Is a 10-point must scoring system ala boxing the way to go in MMA? Is there another, more effective way to judge fights? And what about the final result. Did Griffin deserve to win that fight? Did he win four rounds and should the second round have been scored 10-8? I’m curious to see what people think.

Posted in Fights