Broken Scorecards are Bad for Business.

Decline intercedes where willpower leaves.

MMA judges are infamously known to throw out controversial scorecards in high-profile fights. UFC 282 co-headliners Paddy Pimblett and Jared Gordon went the distance this Saturday, meaning the judges’ three scorecards would determine who the true victor was. It was clearly going to be a unanimous decision in favor of America’s own Jared Gordon, yet every single card declared this fight to belong to the industry’s massively popular Pimblett.

Fans were immediately outraged, as #robbery and many other relevant hashtags began trending on twitter. As someone familiar with the scoring criteria, it appeared this decision came straight from the eyes of Ray Charles himself. Regardless, this story is much more than my opinion on a single MMA match. Two candidates competed, and despite a clear victory on the horizon, faceless figures swayed the results in favor of the person with the organization’s backing.

The robbery was clear as day, and public sentiment reflected that. With the headline fight of the night also going to a widely contested decision (this one which I found to be appropriate), calls to fire the judges were hurled relentlessly. Fans genuinely believe that this consistent string of bad decisions are ruining the entire sport. Now you may have caught on by now that this story sounds very similar to the 2020 election, as the parallels are almost 1:1.

Of course MMA is just a sport, but the audience can be considered a more condensed block of the American people- a people who essentially view politics as a sport as well. This assumed corruption has been going on for years, yet the audience members stop at airing their grievances on twitter, only to watch the same thing happen again the next week. This is called complacency, and it perfectly sums up the state of our country and its integrity-free elections.

Having hot takes on a fight bare no consequences to the average person, which is why it is disappointing to see so-called conservatives still scared to talk about our elections honestly. We are supposed to be truthful, yet many of us side with the establishment when controversy arises. People who hate what you stand for are not going to be any more pleased with you when you do end up compromising on what matters the most. The MMA fans understand that by quietly allowing dishonest results to run rampant, the entire integrity of their sport is crushed. As a nation, we cannot afford to be any different.

The largest flaw of a democracy is that it thrives by appealing to the lowest common denominator. The average person cannot talk to you about geolocation data and ballot harvesting, but they can definitely say that their quality of life has gone down with prices rising everywhere. Although the state athletic commissions cannot be breached, more transparency into our social media networks are being made public by the day. It will take an immense level of competency to ever successfully market our side of the political aisle to the public again, but know that compromising our values in broad daylight just to lose again will be the death of us.