Strickland’s Coach Wants Judge Fired Over Terrible Scorecard

XTreme Couture head coach Erick Nicksick wasn’t shy about expressing his disgust at Sal D’Amato’s scorecard in the Strickland vs. Hermansson fight

Bad MMA judging from Nevada officials is nothing new, especially as we approach our 50th UFC Vegas event cooped up in the UFC Apex. But that doesn’t mean the issue isn’t still upsetting fighters and coaches as they see their futures and paychecks jerked around by consistently questionable scoring.

At UFC Vegas 47, the big judging controversy surrounds the main event: while Sean Strickland rightfully defeated Jack Hermansson via decision (watch the highlights here), it ended up being a split decision. Judges Derek Cleary and Junichiro Kamijo both scored the fight 49-46 for Strickland. Sal D’Amato somehow saw it 48-47 Hermansson.

Strickland’s head coach at XTreme Couture, Erick Nicksick, took to Twitter to voice his displeasure with the score.

“Not even one media member scored it for Jack,” Nicksick wrote, referencing the MMADecisions page for the fight where media members submit their score cards. “I know we won, but if this guy is still judging, he will continue to make egregious decisions and ultimately cost fighters their careers and livelihood.”

He finished off his tweet with an unambiguous #FireSal hashtag.

Others on Twitter were equally unimpressed with Sal.

Of course, we wouldn’t expect anything to change. Sal has been mucking up scoring for over a decade now and the commission has never cared before. This isn’t even his worst score by far. The only thing we know for sure covering this sport is that nothing will fundamentally change.