CSAC Media Day: Behind the scenes of Bellator 154

The California State Athletic Commission held what’s turned into its annual Media Day in San Jose last Saturday at Bellator 154. While the focus of many in the MMA community was on UFC 198 happenings in Brazil, myself, Steven Marrocco from MMAjunkie, and Josh Saenz and Jaymz Jaime from MMA Complex got a judging and drug testing education from Big John McCarthy and CSAC Executive Director Andy Foster, along with on-the-job training from the official CSAC judges we shadowed, picking their brain between each round.

While the program was similar to last year’s version held at Bellator 136, going through it a second time had its advantages. Last year we were thirsty and starving (through no fault of the CSAC) and took some time to get our bearings. When the first beatdown round came, I was so fixated on choosing the winner that I wasn’t even thinking of a 10-8 round. In the debrief, Foster said he doesn’t know what you’re doing here if that wasn’t scored a 10-8 round and I didn’t even consider it.

But that mistake only happened once and I was pumped to get the do-over at this year’s Media Day remix…with mixed emotions about possibly missing Fabricio Werdum live. What follows is a diary-style take on the day with final thoughts at the end.

12:00 – I walk through the loading docks meeting point only to learn there’s more than one loading dock and the security guard has no idea who the hell we are. The upside’s that I run into the MMA Complex guys who are just as confused as I, and we’re off to look for the other docks.

We come across a huge gate with the bald, country-twanging voice known as Andy Foster on the other side and, for lack of better words, it’s time. Foster’s always suited up and is the most open, honest, and forthcoming athletic commission Executive Director I’ve ever met. I genuinely love his openness to new ideas, new experiments, and any outsiders who might be able to help advance or improve the sport.

It’s great meeting the Complex guys and, FYI, those maniacs drove to San Jose on two hours sleep after covering Glory 30 on Friday.

12:10 – We all get one question. The other guys’ questions are excellent and I, the real-life professor, ask a dumb one, partially because I asked questions last year and partially because I knew McCarthy was going to be here and I for some reason started thinking of the James Krause three-nut-shots-heard-round-the-world situation on the flight over. Big John’s a captive audience. He has to answer. In the immortal words of Ben Stiller, do it, do it.

Question 1: What’s a 10-7 round? Big John says there used to only be one 10-7 round in MMA history, the 1st round of Cyborg vs. Finney. There are now two. Any guesses? Someone immediately blurts out Magny vs. Lombard 2nd round. Big John explains that we don’t get a lot of 10-7 rounds because the judges do their job. If you’re getting 10-7’d, the fight should probably be stopped.

By the way, if you’ve never spoken with Big John before, it’s quite an experience. You’ll feel like a small little cockroach as he confidently, yet nicely puts you in your place. My only issue is when he rags on “fightmetrics” but we’ll save that for another day.

Question 2: What’s a 10-8 round? [Writer’s note: I forgot to take notes here, but we get to it more later.]

My question gets skipped for being stupid, but we get to it later. [Writer’s note: Big John said he was in good position and the kick didn’t even graze the cup. It was a close but legal strike.]

A judge’s job is not to care about who wins or what the fans think, but to get it right. We have an obligation to the fighters putting blood, sweat, and tears into their training and trying to support their family.

12:26 – Big John tells a story about Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn. When their fighter’s on the ground, Jackson coaches while Wink becomes a cheerleader. Everything the fighter does is “Beautiful! Whoa!” When the fighter’s standing, Wink coaches and Jackson cheerleads. When John walks around the cage and collects scorecards, he usually doesn’t look at them, except for Jackson/Wink fights. When he knows who won the round, he likes to look at the card of the judge closest to Jackson/Wink to see if they were affected by the cheerleading.

12:29 – We watch a clip that I remember from last year but, man, is it a good one – the 3rd round of Diego Sanchez vs. Gilbert Melendez. Who won the round? We’ve got three for Gil and one for Diego. Better than last year where (off memory) two were for Gil and three had Diego.

Watching closely, Diego rarely lands clean. He knocks Gil down, but how? Gil got hit, fell down, braced his fall, and immediately readied to defend himself. While it might be a 10-8 in boxing, in MMA it’s a flash knockdown, the lowest on the knockdown totem pole.

If we watch fighters, they’ll tell us if shots are hurting them. When you reset like Diego with his chest bumps, you’re getting hit and readying yourself to get back in there.

Big John asks us what an Eviscerator is. I’m thinking of Eddie Bravo’s Vaporizer and, other than that, have no freaking clue. What’s an F-something-something? Sounds like a move a Mendes brother might think of but hell if I know. Is Big John f#%king with us right now?

How can you give credit for what’s being done in front of you if you’re not up on all this stuff? The Eviscerator would seem to be something where a fighter’s in obvious pain but the F-something-something might be a more hidden, Von Flue-ish choke. If so, I’m officially not worthy.

12:40 – Effective striking. Shoulder strikes are just annoying designed to get people to move. I ask if and how Big John scores blocks since anyone who’s been kicked in the head knows they can possibly scramble your brain. I selfishly ask for nerd reasons since blocks are counted as misses in the fight stats. To John, it’s all about blocks that do damage. If you put your arm by your head and get rocked with a kick, he’s counting something. If you twist and legitimately block the kick, it’s zero.

12:55 – Effective grappling. (1) You don’t get credit for position. (2) You don’t get credit for position. (3) You don’t get credit for position. It’s all about what you do with the position. But we have to keep in mind that there are many times pressure is applied with grappling that’s very hard to see and would make someone off the street tap. Hurting the opponent with grappling counts.

Effective aggression and cage control only matter if you have the round perfectly even with effective striking and grappling. If there’s a winner with the latter, the former are ignored. Effective defense allows someone to stay in the fight, but earns zero judging credit. Defense is its own reward.

1:04 – 10-9 is not automatic if you think one guy won the round. If one fighter is defending for 4:50 seconds, you cannot give that fighter nine points.

10-8 is when a fighter wins by a large margin but not an overwhelming margin. Lombard-Magny round 1, all judges gave it a 10-9 and all were wrong. It was a 10-8 round and ref Steve Perceval was correct to let the fight continue as Magny was doing all the things he needed to do to defend himself. The second round should’ve been a 10-7 …

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