Judge Doug Crosby wasn’t able to justify his recent scorecards, but wants everyone to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Crosby was criticized for turning in back-to-back controversial scorecards for the Bellator 289 show on Friday, December 9, then UFC 282 on Saturday, December 10. There was also criticism of how he was allowed to travel from Mohegan Sun, from Connecticut to Las Vegas in the span of 24 hours, and have to judge another fight.
Crosby failed to comment on several occasions, saying it was “up to the discretion of the administrators”, but questioned where the criticism was coming from.
“You have to ask yourself, before you accept it as valid criticism, I would qualify the source of that criticism and say whether it is a working class person who is criticizing or is it a Is it a rich person who is criticizing?” Crosby told Chael Sonnen on the “You’re Welcome” podcast.
He continued, “You have 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 count about five of those seconds for the time it took to write it.” seconds, this gives you about 10 seconds to decide who won a round and who lost a round.
Crosby scored the Bellator 289 bantamweight title fight between Raufon Stotts and Danny Sabatello 50–45 in favor of Sabatello, while the other two judges scored it 48–47 in favor of Stotts.
His other disputed scorecard was for Paddy Pimblett’s UFC co-main event against Jared Gordon, where Crosby scored it 29–28 for Pimblett – many including Gordon strongly disagreed with the scorecard. However this time, two other judges agreed with Crosby and awarded the fight to Pimbalett.
Crosby didn’t justify those specific scorecards, but did give a little insight into what he saw overall.
“Over the last 15 years, when you talk to fighters, the pervasive comment – and I wouldn’t call it a complaint, I would call it a comment or a concern, is that effective grappling is not given enough importance in the scoring criteria and recently Recently, the scoring criteria have been revised and updated so that effective striking and effective grappling are considered equal,” Crosby said. “And if effective grappling is considered equal to effective striking, and then you can count on any of my scores. Through that newly grounded mental lens, it may be easier to understand the score.
“But it has to do with reading and understanding the criteria and I don’t know who does that and who doesn’t. I know when I talk to fighters they are highly intelligent and articulate and courageous and I I respect them all, for better or worse, and that’s what drives me, what’s best for fighters isn’t what’s best for coaches or the media.. for fighters and any fighter knows that they You can discuss anything with me privately any time.
