Do MMA fighters coast to victory with open scoring? New study says no

Yahoo

2 days ago

Was Valentina Shevchenko ahead on the scorecards or tied going into the last round of her 2023 rematch with Alexa Grasso? How about Aljamain Sterling in his 2022 rematch with Petr Yan at UFC 273? No one knew it at the time, but Shevchenko and Sterling were both up 3-1 on two scorecards and five minutes away from victory. Grasso and Yan needed something big — finish the fight or pull off a rare 10-8 round.
In both bouts, three rounds were pretty easy to score while one was debatable. If Shevchenko and Sterling had known they were up 3-1, would they have fought differently and taken less risks? It could be a wise thing to do, but then again, professional fighters probably are who they are because they don't approach risk the same way as us mere mortals. And what would Grasso and Yan have done? Turned up the screws even more and hunted for a finish?
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While science can't tell us with certainty how two specific people like Shevchenko and Sterling would behave if their fights had open scoring, it can shed light on whether fighters in general tend to systematically change their behavior when scores are known in real time.
Max Holloway is one of many high-profile MMA fighters who has long advocated for open scoring.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
The answer for fighters in the lead might be surprising — they don't tend to coast.
Being ahead in the last round doesn't statistically change fighter behavior with real-time scoring. It's the trailing fighters who change. They tend to shift away from takedowns and submission attempts — likely in pursuit of a knockout — and end up losing the final round even more often, according to my study in the Journal of Sports Analytics.
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High-profile fights with controversial endings get people talking and often stir up open-scoring debates. But the benefits and drawbacks of revealing scores in real time would apply to multiple bouts on every event card when one fighter has the lead and is a round away from victory.
Research breakdown
Ever watched a fight with friends and the round winner was so obvious you didn't need to ask who they scored it for?
Well, judges have the same thoughts, or at least I did as a judge for amateur MMA shows in Los Angeles. Sitting cageside at Metroflex Gym and the Coliseum, I'd sometimes wonder how the other two judges scored a round; other times, it was abundantly clear. Those moments were the spark for the first scholarly study of open scoring in MMA.
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The Kansas Athletic Commission authorized open scoring in 2020, and Colorado's commission followed suit in 2021, then they studied the effects with available data. The big concern from critics of the model is always the claim a fighter who knows he or she is up two points or more heading into the last round will tend to disengage more and cruise to victory. Kansas studied this using Invicta and LFA events and found the fighter in the lead wins the last round even more often with open scoring — 11-12% more, to be exact. That doesn't look like leading fighters disengaging, though Kansas couldn't examine their actual statistical behavior in those final rounds.
That's where UFC data comes into play, since they track a broad range of fighter performance statistics. Even though the promotion has never used open scoring, some fights are effectively openly scored to anyone with the smallest bit of fight acumen. Other fights have legitimate ambiguity entering the last round.
After formalizing that idea, filtering 3,646 UFC bouts over a seven-and-a-half year period, and accounting for the fact that fight data comes from the real world instead of an experiment, what was left was something similar to a randomized controlled trial, except this one studied open scoring in MMA rather than the effectiveness of a medicine.
Would Valentina Shevchenko have regained her title a year earlier with open scoring?
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
The study focused on aspects of fighter performance related to the action and activity in a round (jabs, power strikes, knockdowns, damage, takedowns, submission attempts, and clinch and ground control), since promoters are the ones who ultimately decide whether to use open scoring if an athletic commission makes it available, and they aren't in the business of dull fights or lackluster endings.
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Similar to Kansas, the study found fighters in the lead win the final round 10.4% more often with open scoring. And that increased win rate came entirely from the judges. Ahead fighters don't finish their opponents more often in the final round, they win it on the judges' scorecards. And there's zero evidence they disengage, coast or run away from the fight. This doesn't mean that no fighter would ever disengage in the last round. It means that fighters making decisions under the UFC's incentive structure don't show signs of systematically cruising or running away from action.
The fighter with the lead likely wins the last round more often because trailing fighters change their behavior when they know they only have five minutes left to steal a win.
Turns out Din Thomas was on the mark when he spoke to The Athletic on the topic five years ago. 'I do know this,' he said, 'If you've got a lead on me and you're trying to avoid fighting me, I'm coming after your ass. … If I'm fighting a guy, it's a three-round fight, he won two rounds and I'm going into the last round, and he tries to coast on me? I'm going after that motherf***er. You can't coast on a guy if the other guy's coming at you because he knows he's losing.'
The 'coming at you' documented in the study is the trailing fighter reducing their rate of takedown attempts by 38% in the last round and a 49% reduction in their submission attempt rate, meaning they're likely hunting a knockout finish. Other performance metrics such as their rates of jabs and power strikes don't change, but the way they throw those strikes could change in a manner not well captured by fight statistics. Think of the combinations they throw, setups, timing and then the openings they leave for counters.
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The story that seems to emerge from the data is fighters who know they're about to lose look more for a knockout, and they don't tend to get it. On top of that, judges notice degradations in their striking or strategy, so they end up losing the last round more often.
After reviewing the study, Adam Roorbach, former executive director of the Kansas Athletic Commission — one of the driving forces for regulatory acceptance of open scoring — commented to Uncrowned: 'What this study shows is what we at the KAC theorized when we developed the open-scoring system. Fighters will continue to fight and not run when ahead. They are overwhelmingly in favor of utilizing open scoring and deserve to know the score of their fight.'
Max Holloway scoffs at the idea of coasting.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Why is it open scoring so rare?
When The Athletic conducted its anonymous fighter survey in 2020, they found that 80% of fighters supported open scoring. Nothing stands out from the data in terms of putting fighters at additional risk. And logistically, if Kansas and Colorado can handle it, surely other commissions can as well.
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Wading into decision-making processes inside athletic commissions is a tricky task, but what's clear and straightforward is there's no decision for promoters to make if state and tribal jurisdictions haven't approved real-time scoring as an option.
In the U.S., open scoring is potentially available in four states.
Kansas and Colorado have authorized it. Wyoming has had two bare-knuckle shows with open scoring and would also allow MMA promoters to use it, according to executive director Nick Meeker, but hasn't received a request yet. And New Mexico informed Uncrowned that open scoring 'would be decided on a case-by-case basis,' per communications director Andrea Brown.
The open-scoring system changes fights — just not in a way that would disappoint many fight fans.
We already know a Max Holloway will keep pressing with a surefire lead toward the end of a fight. Now there's statistical evidence about how numerous fighters within the UFC ecosystem generally behave when they know the score.