We all know about the state of Judging in MMA ( Machida vs Rua for example) and i was reading a few back issues of a magazine called the New Scientist, and i came across a very interesting article about How colour can effect the outcome of Close fights.
Here is an extract from the article
IMAGINE you are an experienced martial arts referee. You are asked to score a number of taekwondo bouts, shown to you on video. In each bout, one combatant is wearing red, the other blue. Would clothing colour make any difference to your impartial, expert judgement? Of course it wouldn't.
Yet research shows it almost certainly would. Last year, sports psychologists at the University of Münster, Germany, showed video clips of bouts to 42 experienced referees. They then played the same clips again, digitally manipulated so that the clothing colours were swapped round. The result? In close matches, the scoring swapped round too, with red competitors awarded an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were dressed in blue (Psychological Science, vol 19, p 769). "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won't change the outcome of the fight," says Norbert Hagemann, who led the study. "But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scale."
and you can find the whole article here Winners wear red: How colour twists your mind
So i started wondering if this could effect the outcome of MMA, so i rewatched a few close fights
Shogun (Blue Corner) Vs Machida (Red Corner)
Matt Hamill (Blue Corner) Vs Michael Bisping ( Red Corner)
Brandon Vera ( Blue Corner) vs Randy Couture (Red Corner)
and every time the red Corner was the winner,... to check fight metric
Shogun (fight metric winner) Vs Machida
Matt Hamill (fight metric winner) Vs Michael Bisping
Brandon Vera ( fight metric winner) vs Randy Couture
This means that in actual fact the blue corner should of been the winner
So what does this mean? Well i dont really know, we could go on and check a load more fights and see what happens with them, but according to the Article the results only varied by 12% when the colour switched ( it should be roughly 50/50 )
When they analysed the results they found that shirt colour appeared to influence the result, with nearly 55 per cent of bouts being won by the competitor in red. In closely fought bouts it was 62 per cent (Nature, vol 435, p 293). "It should have been roughly 50 per cent red, 50 per cent blue, and this was a statistically significant deviation," Barton says. "Skill and strength may be the main factors - if you're rubbish, a red shirt won't stop you from losing, but when fights were relatively symmetrical, colour tipped the balance."
So guys what do you think, could this be the missing factor in close fights, or is it just random coincidence?
before you vote/post a comment i do urge you to read the article first, and even check out some fights of your own to see what the outcome is, the 3 i picked where the first ones i thought of so i was pretty surprised when the results were spot on with the scientific findings
Winners wear red: How colour twists your mind