Never understood scoring, too arbitrary. I mean, Lawler connected with everything for the first two. Hard to imagine anything Robbie hits you with isn't significant, especially when we saw Rory's face.
Rory destroyed him in the third - thought for sure he'd put him down with those elbows, but Lawler survived, and so on. Just seems so random to say x was more significant than y, when they both appear equally hurt by their respective pummelings.
Also, is that even part of a judge's criteria: significant strikes, power punches, etc., or are you just imagining how it might be swaying each's scorecard?
Shit, in boxing, seems Floyd rarely ever lands with much "significance," just outpoints everyone. Do we not do points in MMA?
Like I said, I'm clueless here.
Definition of significant strikes:
significant strikes refer to all strikes at distance and power strikes in the clinch and on the ground. It does not include small, short strikes in the clinch and on the ground. Those will be included in the Total Strikes category.
According to the fight statistics, Rory MacDonald landed 86 significant strikes compared to Lawler's 70. So Rory had 16 more sig. strikes than Lawler for the entire fight, which means he probably had a bigger advantage than 16 before Lawler beat him up in the 5th.
They say that the judges score the bouts based on "effective striking, grappling, and Octagon control". Maybe they felt that MacDonald was more of the aggressor in the earlier rounds IE stalking Lawler down etc.......
There must have been something that the judges were agreeing on/seeing to all have MacDonald up 3-1 going into the 5th.
I still believe there is room for subjectivity in the scoring system, which is why we have seen some absolutely terrible decisions over the years.
Just take your boy Lawler for example. He should have beat Hendricks the first time and lost the rematch, but it turned out the exact opposite.
Each judge also seems to have individual tendencies when it comes to scoring a fight. They said that two of the judges put more than normal value on active head jabs, which they said favored MacDonald. Judges can also put different weight to missed strikes as well as how tight you lock up a submission.
So maybe MacDonald lucked up, and got paired with three judges who tend to score fights that favor his fighting style more than Lawler's.
That's why they always say that you never want to leave the fight in the hands of the judges

Robbie made sure that didn't happen this time.