Judge Doug Crosby wasn’t able to justify his recent scorecards, but wants everyone to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Crosby was under fire for turning in back-to-back controversial scorecards for the Bellator 289 show on Friday, Dec. 9 then UFC 282 on Saturday, Dec. 10. There was also criticism as to how he was allowed to travel from Mohegan Sun in Connecticut to Las Vegas in span of 24 hours, and have to judge another fight.
Crosby failed to comment on numerous occasions stating that it’s “up to the discretion of the administrators,” but questioned where that criticism was coming from.
“You’d have to ask yourself, before you accept that as valid criticism, I would qualify the source of that criticism and say is this a working class person making that critique or is it a fabulously wealthy person making that critique?,” Crosby told Chael Sonnen on the “You’re Welcome” podcast.
He continued, “You’ve got to assign a numerical value to what you just saw, and on average you get about 15 seconds to turn that score in. And if you write off about five of those seconds for the time it takes to write it, that leaves you about 10 seconds to make a decision about who won a round and who lost a round.”
Crosby scored the Bellator 289 bantamweight title fight between Raufeon Stots and Danny Sabatello 50-45 in favor of Sabatello, whereas the other two judges scored it 48-47 in favor of Stots.
His other debated scorecard was for Paddy Pimblett’s UFC co-main event against Jared Gordon, where Crosby scored it 29-28 for Pimblett – a scorecard many including Gordon heavily disagreed with. However this time, the two other judges agreed with Crosby and awarded Pimblett the fight.
Crosby didn’t justify those specific scorecards, but gave a little insight on what he looks at overall.
“Over the last 15 years, when you talk to the fighters, the overarching comment – and I’m not going to call it a complaint, I’ll call it a comment or a concern, is that effective grappling is not given enough weight in the scoring criteria and recently, the scoring criteria has been modified and updated so that effective striking and effective grappling are considered equal,” Crosby said. “And if effective grappling is considered the equal of effective striking, and then you look at any of my scores through that newly ground mental lens, the scores may become easier to understand.
“But that has to do with reading and understanding the criteria and I don’t know who does that and who doesn’t. I do know that when I talk to fighters they are overwhelmingly intelligent and articulate and courageous and I respect them all, for better or worse, and that’s what moves me forward, is what’s best for the fighters not what’s best for the coaches or the media. For the fighters and any fighter knows that they can discuss anything with me in private at any time.”
