Nobody in MMA really wants to talk about it but I think one of the biggest problems with judging right now is plain old bias. If you have one guy the promoter and the fans want to win then 9 times out of 10 that guy gets the close calls as Thomson did. We have moaning about bias judging in Japan for years and yeah I do think there was some of it BUT you also get matches like Kid/Warren where the promoter/fan favourite doesnt get the close call. You hardly ever get that in the US.... JZ/Thomson Randy/Vera Bisping/Hamil Shogun/Machida 1 Forrest/Rampage Lil Nog/Bader etc All "close fights"(well maybe not Shogun/Machida but the first 3 rounds were) but if you step back and look at all of the results you see the guy the promoters back gets the call the vast majority of the time. The hopelessly vague criteria help that aswell since the goalposts seem to constantly shift, Forrest wins a round in which he gets knocked down by Rampage base don low kicks, Shogun doesnt win rounds where he takes little damage and outlands Machida with low kicks. I actually the SAC's make it easier to get away with this kind of thing in some respects, if theres a bias call in Japan then its easy to lay it at the feet of a promoter. I'd guess boxing fans have a bit more of a realistic view but in MMA in the US the commisions impartiality has been hyped to such a degree that most MMA fans wouldnt even consider it not to be the case.
