My Journey to becoming an MMA Judge

Ever since the days of the UFC 1 I have been enamored with the sport of Mixed Martial Arts but it wasn't until UFC 60 Gracie vs. Hughes when I completely fell in love with the sport. My dad and I made the 600 mile trek to the Staples Center and spent $2000 on the pair of ringside tickets. I truly had the time of my life and upon returning home I went to the local gym where I began training. I trained in the disciplines of Jiu Jitsu and Kick boxing for a few years as well as trained Judo at the local community college. I never really planned on doing anything with this knowledge of the sport, I spent my time training essentially for the thrilling aspect. I haven't missed a UFC PPV or event since UFC 60 and any event that has been relatively close from the big organizations I have made it there live.

Last June I quit my job at a leading bio-tech company to go back to school in hopes of becoming a teacher. Having an extensive amount of newfound free time on my hands I began to frequent the message boards and MMA forums. One day while on the forums I ran across a thread discussing how bad MMA judges were and how we needed to have people that knew what they were looking at judging fights. Not really expecting much I google searched "how to become an MMA judge" and I was led to Big John McCarthy's website. While on his website I noticed that he was having a judging class at his gym in Valencia in about a month. I had my wife fax off the paperwork, I paid the fees and booked my hotel room. I researched a little more about the course to find out what we were expected to know for the course and what we were going to be tested on. One aspect that I focused on was the rule book, I knew a fair amount of it but I also knew there were little forgotten aspects that I needed to familiarize myself with. The night before I set out for my training I read the rulebook out loud while recording it onto my iPhone because I planned on listening to it on repeat for the 6 hour drive that I was facing.

I made the trip, got to my hotel and made sure to get a good night's rest because I the first day of class was 8 hours of instruction. Upon getting to Big John's Ultimate Training Academy I noticed all the unique memorabilia that lined the walls of the academy, as I was taking it all in Big John called all of the class into the classroom he had in the upstairs area of his gym. He gave an introduction, told some stories and then let us know the dreadful news that his course only has a pass rate of about 20%. The first day we watched fight after fight, scoring them and discussing why we scored each in a certain way. He gave us tips on what to look for and told us stories from his experiences. We were then passed off to one of his students who drilled techniques with us because we were going to be tested on 112 unique techniques that were used in the cage. At the end of the day I went back to my hotel, called my wife and told her about how much information that I needed to retain for the test the following day. She assured me that I would be fine and helped me study by testing my on the rule book and having me explain techniques. 

The next day the class showed up, asked a ton of questions and had a recap of what we were going to be tested on later that day. After a lunch break in which I had no desire to eat at all we collected back into the classroom and when the test was set to begin. The first part of the test was the techniques portion, we had 10 seconds to view each video clip and 10 seconds to write each technique. For this portion there were 112 questions and we needed to get 90% of them write in order to pass. Having an extensive amount of knowledge in this area it seems on the surface to be easy but with the added pressure and lack of time given I tended to second guess myself a lot. After this portion we were all sent out of the room while Big John graded this portion of the test. Talking with some of my other classmates we all felt that we had failed by this time and knowing I had a 6 hours drive ahead of me I actually thought about leaving and hitting the road back home.  About 10 minutes later he called us in for the rules portion of the test, this portion also required a 90% to pass and consisted of roughly 85 questions. Lucky for me my study technique I utilized on the drive down worked greatly as I could recall the rulebook word for word when the test was given. We were then given another break and 10 minutes after we came back for the final portion of the test, judging a fight. This fight was a really close back and forth fight which made it really difficult to score for 5 rounds. We were told that it would be an automatic fail if we scored the fight for the wrong fighter.

After the tests were added up Big John had certificates printed up and announced that only 2 of the 8 class members were successful in passing the course. After nearly having an anxiety attack Big John announced that I passed and received the highest score in the class (96% total). I was given a certificate from Big John McCarthy signifying that we met his standards on what a judge should know before judging a fight. We stuck around after the class and talked to Big John for a while. He began to tell me that he told his wife the night before that he thought that I would pass the course based off of answers I was giving and some of the questions I had been asking. Then he gave me and the other guy some advice on how to get our amateur license and who to contact. 

After the 6 hour drive home I went with my family to dinner and celebrated. The next morning I contacted CAMO, the licensing body for amateur MMA in the state of California and applied for my license. After faxing over my certificate from Big John's class I was awarded my license and 2 weeks later I was asked to judge my first event. Overall my experience was amazing, the class was worth the price of admission just hear all of the stories Big John has over the years and as far as judging goes I now make some side money getting paid to sit ringside and enjoy a night of fights.