Job Discussion Forums

[magnifica]

Please help settle a long running dispute regarding an MMA fighter's record! Some say that he has never lost a round, some say that he has! The fighter is Lyoto Machida.

The following are his two most difficult fights and this is where the dispute lies, Unfortunately, the commentary is in Japanese so we need your help!

If you understand Japanese would you mind listening to the following two youtube videos and telling me what the verdict is in the following two fights?

First, we need to know if the fight was scored in rounds e.g. 30-27 or was the fight just judged in it's entirety.

Then, if the fights were judged in rounds, please tell what the judges scores were... if the fight was judged in it's entirety, what was the ruling?

The first fight is here: The verdict is given at 6:00.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBiglewSkqs

The second fight is here: The verdict is given at 9:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAeV5VCqVmk

Thanks for taking you time with this! Cheers!

[fluffyhamster]

Effective translation: The first fight was scored 30-29 to Machida (or maybe I should call him LYOTO!) by the first judge, and 30-30 and 29-29 by the second and third, which necessitated those two judges having to decide who to award the fight to overall (i.e. the two point-based "draw" desisions weren't simply added up into an 89-88 total in Machida's favour, but had to be broken by a further "overall" decision (reconsideration?) by each of judges concerned); the two of them each awarded it then to Machida overall. He thus won on a unanimous 3-0 decision, and it is extremely unlikely that he lost any of the rounds.

The second fight meanwhile appears to have been a simple and straightforward majority 2-1 decision in favour of Machida (for which he'd surely had to have won both rounds in the opinions of at least two of the judges, right?).

In each case, the decision is for the whole fight i.e. the total score and/or decision. The first appears to be a Hero's (sic) event, which IIRC (and going by the number of YouTube clips devoted to this particular fight) are over 3 rounds, making 10 points maximum per judge per round I guess; as for the second, I'm not sure of the promoter, and who knows exactly how many points were actually recorded (if any) over apparently only the 2 rounds (because no points are announced).

Anyway, from what I've seen of Japanese MMA generally (mainly Pride, Shooto, and Hero's), they (the commentators and the audience) aren't too interested in who won or lost individual rounds (though they do, like every nationality, like their replays of any bone-crunching highlights), and seem to be satisfied with and go primarily by overall scores and/or decisions, and there certainly doesn't seem to be any discussion or further breakdown of those totals in these two cases. (I'm just going by viewing only the two links/clips you provided, in which the Japanese used is indeed pretty straightforward, brief and literally "to the point(s)"!). You'd probably need to get the full event as originally broadcast or made available in Japan to be absolutely sure about what the finer details were (if any were indeed given by the original commentators), but I imagine it would be similarly "inconclusive", for anyone wanting anything like the judges' scorecard details given in e.g. western boxing (I haven't watched much western MMA beyond the first dozen or so UFCs!).

Hope this helps.

[magnifica]

fluffy hamster: you're a legend. thanks so much for the translation!

I think from this we can conclude (I take it that you are a Lyoto fan?) that he has never lost a round unanimously (or, as we already know, a fight unanimously)

Cheers again and enjoy UFC 104. It's gonna be a cracker!

[fluffyhamster]

Actually that's probably the first of his fights I've seen (or if I did see him before, he didn't make much of an impression for whatever reason). One thing I found interesting was that he appears (from the related YouTube clips) to have done a fair amount of karate ("traditional" style tournament sparring, light-contact at most) yet has made a reasonable transition to full-contact MMA; that is, you don't see many karate-ka making that kind of transition (unless it's from the more full-contact styles and into K-1, say - both effectively forms of kickboxing).

[magnifica]

[fluffyhamster]

I think we can take it that you are certainly a Lyoto fan, Magnifica! But seriously, thanks for the info. I used to do Shotokan myself (mainly SKI, Kanazawa Hirokazu as the head honcho), but nowadays prefer Judo.