MMA judge Seth Fuller admits he’s not supposed to speak publicly about scoring fights, but in a recently published video he did so for nearly 30 minutes.
The rule isn’t exclusive to Fuller. Many state athletic commissions forbid officials from speaking publicly. That apparently includes the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the commissioning body Fuller worked for as he judged UFC 277 bouts on July 30 in Dallas.
During and after that event, Fuller was criticized for one of his scorecards, including on the broadcast from commentators [autotag]Joe Rogan[/autotag], Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier, as well as online by fans and media.
“Anybody who watched (UFC 277) heard me disparaged, made fun of, and that’s fine,” Fuller said. “I have a thick skin, but it’s not right, because it’s just not factual.”
Fuller admits UFC 277 was a dream 10 years in the making and said he wasn’t aware of any controversy until he left the arena and received a text message from an unknown number.
“Are you even watching the fights f*cktard?” the message read. “No one in the world had Mayes except you. Sad when even the commentators are clowning your terrible ability to do your job.”
The bout in question was a heavyweight prelim in which Hamdy Abdelwahab defeated Don’Tale Mayes by split decision. While judges Kent Basinger and Dan Mathisen scored the bout 29-28 for Abdelwahab, Fuller scored the fight 29-28 for Mayes.
“I mean, come on,” Cormier said on the broadcast. “… Somebody gave Don’Tale the third round, Joe.”
Rogan responded, “That guy needs a talking to. We need to check and see what he bet on.”
The TDLR has been a frequent target of criticism when it comes to scorecards. In 2020, Rogan accused judge Joe Soliz of not paying attention to a fight at UFC 247. As many pointed out online, in addition to a mention on the broadcast, UFC 277 featured many judges who had little to no UFC experience.
In his response video, Fuller said UFC 277 was first and foremost a dream come true. He explained that while the preliminary card judges lacked UFC fights, every single judge had over a decade of experience.
“I figure I’ve judged about 80 cards and several hundred fights themselves,” Fuller said. “I’ve judged and reffed, because I do both. Now again, is that experience enough? I don’t know in what profession 10 years of doing something is not considered seasoned. … This ‘regional’ judge Steve Armstrong, here he is at UFC 5 cornering Guy Mezger – UFC 5. He’d been doing it since before this. How much more seasoned do you need to be? The other judges, Ken Basinger, Dan Mathison, Aaron Menard have also been doing it over a decade. These are seasoned judges. For them to talk about it again, every time a judge makes a score they don’t like, they have to insult them.”
Initially, Fuller was convinced he’d screwed up. It’s possible, after all, he admitted. However, a closer look reinforced his original scorecard, which he broke down in an in-depth explanation interspersed with fight clips and criteria references.
Long analysis short, Fuller thinks Mayes’ striking did more damage than Adbelwahab’s, despite the discrepancy in volume. Fuller also admitted Round 3, the round in question where he differed from his colleagues, was so close that two punches in the final seconds tipped him in the direction of Mayes.
“If you disagree, that’s fine,” Fuller said. “Two other judges obviously disagreed, and I have no problem with that. I just want to show you I’m not an idiot. I’m not bad at scoring. I don’t not know what I’m looking at. I do know what I’m looking at. In fact, I’d say I know the rules that I just read to you better than the announcers, because the announcers just went through the course that I went through 12 years ago.”
Fuller said it would’ve been a “safe” decision to lean toward Abdelwahab, as the optics of a person in control often trump damage in the eyes of the general public, who aren’t as in tune with the scoring criteria. However, he decided to go with his gut.
“I take my job very seriously,” Fuller said. “Both of these fighters put their lives on the line, their health on the line, and their money on the line. It’s not my fault my score can effect one of their purses. I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s a terrible idea, but I take it seriously. I didn’t just willy-nilly give out that score. I decided I felt Mayes, from everything that I saw, had outscored in damage Abdelwahab in that round, and so I wrote it down.”
Fuller said he holds no grudge against Rogan or anyone else. In fact, he’s a massive Rogan fan. The point of his video, he said, wasn’t to criticize others as much as it was to stick up for himself in fear the commission might cave into the court of public opinion and remove him from future duties.
“The commission (might go), ‘Hey, this is why we shouldn’t have put this guy on the main UFC. This is why we shouldn’t have put Steve Armstrong in the main UFC. This is why we shouldn’t have put these local judges on the main UFC card.’ To me, that’s a bunch of BS,” Fuller said. “To me, if I’m doing it wrong, then cite me for doing it wrong. But if you’re pretending that I’m not experienced, or I was careless, or I didn’t think or concentrate or didn’t do my absolute best and that I don’t care about these fighters and don’t care if the result is the correct result, according to the rules that they agreed to, then you are crazy. You’re just plain wrong. It’s not OK.
Fuller continued, “Most (judges) are retired from other things, have other jobs, run other gyms. I respect them all, and they had to keep quiet for a long time and not respond to all of those people for a long time. Therefore, that makes them better men than me. But hopefully I serve as a representative. Hopefully they’ll be kind of proud of me like, ‘Yeah, finally someone is speaking out.'”
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