BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

One Fighting Championship reverses a referee's decision


One Fighting Championship announced today that the bout that took place on 31 August 2012 at ONE FC: PRIDE OF A NATION in the Philippines between Shannon Wiratchai and Mitch Chilson has been ruled a no contest after a thorough review by ONE FC Officials. Shannon Wiratchai’s record will now officially be recorded as two wins and one no contest and Mitch Chilson’s will officially be recorded as three wins, one loss and one no contest.

After a thorough review of the match, ONE FC Officials have decided that Wiratchai landed an illegal leg kick to a grounded Chilson in round two and referee Moritaka Oshiro incorrectly stopped the fight as he determined at that point that Chilson could not properly defend himself. This win for Wiratchai has now been reversed and this fight will now be officially ruled as a no contest. 

Also, earlier this week ONE FC announced that it will adopt full PRIDE rules for soccer kicks, eliminating the open attack signal from the referee. All soccer kicks to a grounded opponent are now legal at all times. This decision was made to prevent any future confusion for fighters when delivering kicks to grounded opponents.
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Now I can understand the change in decision but I do not agree to it. I think this is an even greater mistake to correct this days after the match. The declaration of a “no contest” should have been done immediately right after the match not four days after. If technical officials declared such after the controversial end of the Andrei-Arlovski-Tim Sylvia match then why did it take four days to make a decision on the Wiratchai-Chilson bout?

Yet the current decision on the Phil Baroni- Rodrigo Ribiero match stands even if soccer kicks were used as well.

Does this mean that the fighters were not fully briefed? Assuming they were, they should have gotten it right immediately after the Baroni-Ribiero match.

I thought that Moritaka Oshiro stopped the fight a few seconds prematurely but he has a few seconds to make a decision to protect a fighter’s health. MMA has been replete with controversial decisions and stoppages. There’s the end to the first round between Dan Henderson and Fedor Emelianenko (in a Strikeforce match last July 2011) where referee Herb Dean had to make a quick decision. Strikeforce did not reverse the decision of Dean.

I believe that the One Fighting Championship: Pride of a Nation has pushed MMA into a greater consciousness in the country but poor officiating not to mention the reversal of decisions can be construed as not being able to get their act together.

Hopefully, One FC and other MAA outfits will figure this out.

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