Steve Mazzagatti Stikes Again: The Stupid Ref and Dumb Rules Factors
by Correspondent Written on December 09, 2009 
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What should have been the outcome of Jones vs Hamill?
The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale has come and gone.
The most notable fight all night was also the most controversial.
I'll level with you. The Jon Jones Disqualification loss pissed me off like few things in the world can.
Is this because I'm a Jon Jones fan? Yes, but that's only a small part of it.
Even if I were a Jon Jones hater, I'd be mad as hell at the outcome of that fight. Loss by disqualification has been irksome to me for a long, long time.
For starters, there are too many nitpicky rules in this sport, and the purity of MMA as a legitimate combat sport suffers as a result.
Jones vs. Hamill was extremely reminiscent of Yushin Okami beating Anderson Silva by disqualification.
For those who might be unfamiliar, Yushin Okami was getting beat up by Silva, but managed to take the Spider down. So, there you had Yushin Okami in top position and leaning back, ready to unleash a barrage of ground and pound. Then, out of nowhere, Anderson Silva landed a devastating kick to Okami’s face, knocking him out cold.
Then the strike was deemed illegal because Okami's knees were on the mat when the kick landed.
The win was handed to Okami—once he finally came to that is.
Let’s think about this rule for just a moment.
Fine enough to say that a standing opponent cannot kick a grounded opponent. Equally understandable that a fighter in top position can’t knee or kick to the head. But should it be illegal to unload an upkick from flat on your back from inside your own guard?
I’d say if you can actually manage to do it, then go for it!
Bottom position is a significantly disadvantageous place to be. If you can actually upkick, then why not allow it? It offers one more thing for the guy in top position to have to worry about. The maneuver is almost impossible to execute after all.
Enforcement of this rule is just one more disadvantage to a fighter who is flat on his back.
Then we have the "12 to 6" elbow rule.
To tell you the truth, I didn't even know this rule existed until the Jones vs. Hamill fight. So what this rule says is essentially "you can strike with elbows from top position, but you can't strike with certain kinds of elbows."
To comprehend the wrong-headed logic of this, it would pretty much be like banning certain punches to the head in boxing. Imagine for a moment if professional boxing changed their rules to state, "you can throw right crosses and jabs and hooks, but uppercuts are off-limits." Say what?
I know first-hand that elbows can be thrown from many angles and there really isn't an overwhelming "most lethal" elbow strike.
I can generate maximum power with an elbow thrown backwards, personally.
More than anything, it just depends on where your opponent is in relation to you. A 12 to 6 strike is not any more powerful than 9 o'clock to 3 o’clock or any other direction of elbow—it just depends on your posture, build, and technique.
It's pretty effective if you're standing stationary and striking an inanimate object and are free to maximize the downward force of the strike. But that form of 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock elbow strike wouldn't be likely work in a real fight. The strike would be so over-telegraphed that only an unconscious opponent would fail to get the hell out of the way or to block the strike.
In the form used by Jones, it wasn't any more powerful than any other angle of elbow strike.
It really comes down to this: Either elbows to downed opponents are allowed or they are not.
Seriously, how do you expect combatants to be thinking right in the middle of combat, “Wait a second, is this elbow strike going to be at the wrong angle?”
Of course not!
I expect that fighters are going to look for openings in their opponents' defenses and do their level best to attack where there are openings.
That is exactly what Jon Jones did Saturday evening.
Hamill took some sideways elbows and was defending those. Jones altered the angle of his strikes to compensate for Hamill's defense.
I can say this much: Both rules suck!
Neither man was warned before being penalized with an undeserved loss on their record. If Jon Jones and Anderson Silva had not KO'd their opponent, they wouldn't have lost. How screwed up is that? What bad luck that their respective opponents were unable to continue.
Only because their opponents could not continue does a penalty translate into a loss. Both disqualifications translated into, "I kicked the guy's ass. Oh yeah, and I lost the fight, too." Shouldn't you have to earn your victories by actually beating your opponents?
I understand the rules, but, at the very least, these things should go down as No Contest.
The very thought that you can get completely dominated for the entire fight, yet you get a win on your record anyway is just ridiculous.
If we're talking about blatant offenses where the referee warns the offending fighter repeatedly, then I can concede that the loss is deserved.
If you've been warned and continue to "cheat," then you deserve the loss.
But Steve Mazzagatti never warned Jon Jones. He just cavalierly jumped in and took a point away—just like he did to Brock Lesnar against Frank Mir.
That's another fight outcome that was effectively negated by Mr. Mazzagatti. And this time, if you look at the replay, it’s clear as day that Matt Hamill was already finished before the illegal elbow was thrown.
Jones was doing what MMA fighters do—finishing the fight. The ref hadn't stopped the fight yet so Jonny Jones was just pummelling away until the ref stopped it.
Ooops! Jones turned the angle of his barrage of elbows to the wrong angle! Sorry Mr. Jones, you screwed up and as a result, you lose the fight!
If I'm understanding correctly, they banned the 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock elbow because it's a popular strike for breaking boards and ice and crap like that. With that in mind, we might as well add the following to the list:
- Axe kicks to a downed opponent's body
- Palm strikes of all types
- All open hand chopping strikes
- Hammer fists
- Front Kicks
- Back kicks
- Side kicks
- All other strikes that anyone ever uses to break a board or ice with. If you can document a case of a highly effective ice/brick/board breaking with any strike, that strike instantly becomes illegal in MMA.
The essential basis for this rule is that, "if any type of strike is demonstratively effective and devastating, it must instantly be made illegal." Give it a couple more decades and the UFC will be nothing more than a pillow fighting league.
As it happens, there are a lot of strikes that can be effective at hurting your opponent. That's kind of the point, isn't it?
I have a better idea: How about dumping this idiotic rule?
How about a very serious re-thinking of every nit-picky rule in the game today? Obviously, whoever came up with this one didn't know what the hell they were talking about.
In my book, Jonny "Bones" Jones is still undefeated. He's better than undefeated; he just completely beat the crap out of Matt Hamill from the start of the fight to the end of it—a feat nobody else has ever accomplished!
This “loss,” such as it is, launches Jones into the top 10 contenders at Light Heavyweight. But will the UFC see it that way? Only the UFC brass know for certain.
The only other thing we really learned from this fight: Steve Mazzagatti is becoming a serious liability to the sport. His legacy of fight ruination is growing and growing.
This makes two fighters that would probably still be undefeated today that racked up a loss because Steve Mazzagatti is so trigger happy on penalization. Other referees, like John McCarthy and Herb Dean, issue warnings before taking points away or penalizing a fighter.
Somebody needs to stop Mazzagatti before he ruins another great fighter's undefeated record.
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