Community Issues

There is often a lot of controversy surrounding weight cutting in MMA. It has become something that is almost necessary for competitors regardless of how they feel about the issue. Regularly losing and gaining weight rapidly can negatively affect a fighter's health, both physically and mentally. It's unfortunately done routinely now, and because some fighters go through extreme weight cuts and proceed to gain a significant amount of weight before the fight, there is the possibility of one of the fighters having an unfair weight advantage. This means that even fighters that would prefer fighting at their natural weight are essentially forced to cut anyways so that they don't have to compete against people that have a significant natural size advantage. They put themselves through a lot of pain and suffering just to try and assure an even playing field on the night of the fight. It creates an environment that essentially promotes big unhealthy weight cuts because the fighters that do, often dominate at a weight class where the opposition is smaller, and the positive rewarding of being a weight bully perpetuates it. Overall, many fighters would benefit from more people fighting at their natural weight class.

The rules in MMA are also argued about often amongst the community. There are many arguable things in the ruleset but here I'll provide a couple examples of commonly discussed rule issues. I'll begin with the fact that knees to the head of a downed opponent are illegal. This can be an issue because it is a rule that is arguably favorable to wrestling and grappling heavy fighters. In a fight if someone drops to their knees to get a takedown it is likely they might get kneed in the head for doing so. Making this illegal allows for a fighter to drop down for a takedown without having to worry about a consequential knee, which could be seen as unfair to fighters who lean more towards a striking style. This rule goes for kicks as well, and so these strikes being prohibited while your opponent is down can drastically change the outcome of a fight. Even if the rule isn't changed, they could redefine what is considered a downed opponent in order to prevent people taking advantage of the rule. Another is the 12 to 6 downward elbow. Myself and many others disagree with this rule because there is just no explainable reason for it. Elbows can be thrown from any other angle, so why is this one different? Long story short it isn't. The athletic commission made it a rule long ago during the sports creation out of fear that it was too strong of a strike. We now know that it isn't at all, in fact there are countless techniques allowed in MMA that produce much more power and damage. For example, you can throw flying knees to the head and spinning kicks to the head that are much more dangerous than a 12 to 6 elbow. Listed below is a link to John Mcarthy (long time MMA referee) speaking about the origin of that rule in the creation of the organization, and why it was never a valid rule.

Joe Rogan - Big John McCarthy Explains 12-6 Elbow Rule (youtube.com) 

Inconsistent judging is arguably one of the biggest issues in MMA. It seems as if nearly every fight card has at least one controversial decision in it. I could think personally of countless questionable decisions, and it is a pretty big problem because it can drastically change the outcome of a fighter's career. A fighter can lose a ranking that they fought for years to get by losing a fight that they arguably won. It is an issue that was discussed by professional MMA fighter Nick Urso in the interview I gave, shown on the following page. He discusses some things that could be done to improve the judging system, such as implementing the use of more judges. He mentions that if they were to use 5 judges instead of 3 there would be less room for error. Also, him and many others feel that MMA would benefit from an entirely new judging criteria, rather than the simple round-based boxing type scoring. It is an entirely different sport and there are just more factors to consider than in a boxing match. I would also argue, and most would agree, that more ex-fighters should be judges because they are more knowledgeable about the sport. In addition, he argues for the use of open judging in MMA, which means that the judges openly share how they are scoring the rounds during the fight, rather than waiting until after the fight to show the scorecards. 

Fighters pay in MMA is definitely one issue that no fighter would disagree with. There of course is the obvious, and that is that they all should be getting paid more. Especially in organizations like the UFC, which is massive and creates extensive revenue, with the fighters putting their health on the line for the sport they deserve a larger portion of the gains. Some of the best and most notable MMA fighters in history only make a small fraction of what a professional boxer would make. Some fighters on the UFC roster still work another job just for sufficient funding, which no fighter competing at the highest level in the world should have to work another job just to get by. However, that is only the surface of the issue. When looking deeper you find even more problems with the pay structure of MMA fighters, mainly with the inconsistency. This is another issue that was discussed in the following interview, in which he explains how difficult it is for a fighter not knowing how much money to expect from each fight. There are multiple factors that significantly change a fighter's final pay, and not knowing how much you have to work with makes it difficult during the fight camp as well. You don't know how much you can put into fight preparation such as paying your coaches, nutritional costs, recovery costs, strength and conditioning costs and more. It's like going to work and being clueless about how much money you make per hour.