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Doug Crosby has been widely questioned by MMA fans and officials regarding his legitimacy since the divisive judgment he gave at Bellator 289 main event and UFC 282 co-main event. He urges all to grant him the benefit of the controversy even if he was unable to defend his latest evaluations.
For the first time in the history of the scoring record, a losing fighter received perfect scores from Crosby's 50-45 scorecard for Sabatello.
Crosby’s 50-45 verdict in favor of Sabatello was the first time in the history of the scoring record that a losing candidate got a perfect score from a judge. As a consequence of the judgment, Crosby was stormed with criticism.
Crosby contends he is unable to explicitly comment on scorecards issued for any specific fight. He was the opposing judge in the split decision between Raufeon Stots and Danny Sabatello at Bellator 289. The other two judges gave their verdict 48-47 for Stots. To justify or explain any scorecard, including the 50-45 judgment he gave Sabatello, Crosby claims that sports commissions have procedures in place regarding judges. He asserts that he won't go against these guidelines.
Similar remarks can be made about Crosby's scorecard for the fractious Paddy Pimblett vs. Jared Gordon judgment at UFC 282, even though he was joined by two additional judges that evening, Ron McCarthy, and Chris Lee, who also rendered the same 29-28 verdict despite differing in the number of rounds each fighter received from the three judges.
“You’d have to ask yourself, before you accept that as valid criticism, I would qualify the source of that criticism and say is this a working-class person making that critique or is it a fabulously wealthy person making that critique?” Crosby told Chael Sonnen on the “You’re Welcome” podcast.
“You’ve got 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 write off about five of those seconds for the time it takes to write it, that leaves you about 10 seconds to make a decision about who won a round and who lost a round.”
Crosby when appeared on the podcast of Chael Sonnen, he didn’t comment on any of the two controversial decisions he gave otherwise it would have created another headline. Though he addressed the most recent rule revisions that occurred in 2017 and how scoring measures have progressed over these years.
“Over the last 15 years when you talk the fighters, the overarching comment — and I’m not going to call it a complaint, I’ll call it a comment or a concern — is that effective grappling is not given enough weight in the scoring criteria,” Crosby stated. “Recently, I don’t know how recently, but the scoring criteria has been modified and updated so that effective striking and effective grappling are considered equal."
“If effective grappling is considered the equal of effective striking, and then you look at any of my scores through that newly ground mental lens, the scores may become easier to understand. But that has to do with reaching and understanding the criteria and I don’t know who does that and who doesn’t.”