Lauren Murphy knows MMA scoring better than any active UFC fighter — after one class

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Most of the people in and around the sport — from the fighters and coaches to the fans, reporters, commentators and analysts — only know half of what the judges who decide the winner of a fight are looking for.

That’s what makes Lauren Murphy’s decision to devote a mid-May weekend to attend — ick — a two-day seminar on refereeing and judging MMA more remarkable than it sounds.

To my knowledge, the former one-time UFC women’s flyweight title challenger is the only active athlete on the promotion’s roster to have done so.

Murphy, while speaking with The Post via video call not long after attending the seminar put on by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation primarily for active and aspiring officials, didn’t realize how incredibly rare such an exercise is for current fighters. But the proximity to her home in Houston to the seminar in Austin — about 2 ½ hours by Texas highways — made it achievable. Plus, she came up with a pretty decent reason to go:

“Seems important to know the f–king rules of the sport you’re playing,” said Murphy bluntly, positing a notion that might have served the 49ers well before their overtime loss in the Super Bowl earlier this year.

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As it happens, Murphy picked up some useful knowledge in a single weekend that had eluded her over the course of a 22-fight professional MMA career, especially insight into “the ways that referees think.”

By and large, fighters understand the bulk of the effing rules. No biting. Don’t grab the cage. Stop when the referee says to stop. Yada yada yada.

Judging a fight the way a judge will do it? That’s a whole different animal.

For decades, UFC events drilled into TV viewers’ heads at the beginning of the broadcast how judges score a fight, or, rather, a grossly oversimplified version of it. Back in 2010, the year Murphy made her pro debut, an on-screen graphic labeled “Octagon Regulations” informed that rounds are scored based on “effective striking, grappling, aggression and octagon control.” In recent years, lead play-by-play man Jon Anik — who insists he keeps a copy of the scoring criteria handy — has championed clarifying that scoring is based on “effective striking and grappling, followed by aggression and then octagon control, in that order.”

Anik’s tweak does a better job of informing that “effective striking and grappling” are on an equal plane and are the primary criteria than had been done for years. Aggression is secondary, while octagon control is tertiary.

While true that all three criteria are there for evaluation when needed, the part that just about nobody realizes is that the judges who most frequently work UFC events — think of the likes of Sal D’Amato, Mike Bell and Chris Lee, among others — essentially never look beyond that first level. If a round makes it to the horn, somewhere in the neighborhood 99.999% of the time, “effective striking and grappling” decides the round winner.

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That’s been made clear to me through conversations with active officials over the years. That was made clear to me when I passed the refereeing and judging courses I attended at the 2022 Association of Boxing Commissions annual conference in Niagara, N.Y.

So, too, was it made clear to Murphy in her seminar.

“People hear that cage control is a [criterion], so then they think it’s this huge [criterion]. It’s not,” says Murphy, punctuating with a light laugh. “… The fighter who’s doing the most damage is probably the one that’s winning.”

There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist. The rest can be gleaned from taking a course taught by veteran officials like Kevin MacDonald and D’Amato, who tag-teamed the judging course in Niagara. Heck, even taking a few minutes to carefully read the 3½-page document that outlines the scoring criteria would go a long way for most. There’s even a helpful video explainer from “Severe MMA Podcast” judging maven Seán Sheehan if reading isn’t your thing (but you got this far, so reading is your thing).

The UFC broadcast team is a mixed bag of understanding MMA scoring. Color commentator Laura Sanko has passed the officiating courses and is the highest authority on the team when it comes to officiating know-how; Murphy noted Sanko’s proficiency was underscored during her courses. Anik and fellow play-by-play man John Gooden demonstrate a will to be accurate in explaining the scoring criteria to viewers, and they provide balance to their peers at the other end of the spectrum.

Oh, and that other end of the spectrum? Murphy said that “one broadcaster’s name came up over and over again about being wrong about everything.” The name was left unspoken.

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Fair guess: His initials are D.C. — as in Daniel Cormier and Dominick Cruz. Both men routinely offer wildly off-base suggestions for why a certain fighter is winning a round. That each is a former longtime champion — in Cruz’s case, earning all of his four UFC championship victories on the scorecards — and legend of the sport is a marvel. Even a seminar put forth by several officials specifically for the UFC broadcast team left them misinformed, as if they were half-listening or seeking validation for their biases.

Though it’s critical for broadcasters to accurately relay how scoring works for the masses, Murphy’s biggest takeaway from her experience was how vital the courses are to coaches.

“Every coach needs this course,” Murphy, who coaches young fighters, stressed repeatedly throughout our chat. “When you’re coaching amateurs at your gym, when you’re coaching the f–king up-and-coming pros, you’re gonna know how to coach them better.”

In what should be music to the ears of all the fans calling for judges who themselves previously fought — and there are some familiar names who fit the bill, such as New Jersey-based Eric Colón and Dave Tirelli — Murphy now is intrigued by the idea of becoming a judge herself. Typically, officials begin their judging journey by shadowing working officials at events, and she’s all in for that.

“I would love to do that. I would do that for a year straight if I could,” Murphy said. “And I would do it with all different judges if I could, just so I could be good at it.”

At the 2024 iteration of the ABC conference in Louisville, Ky., judging and refereeing courses are on offer again, a staple of the event. Over Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of working officials and some who aspire to it will pack the Galt House hotel, a stone’s throw from the Muhammad Ali Center.

Murphy had expressed interest in attending to build upon the knowledge she gained from veteran official Blake Grice — who led the refereeing course I took two years ago. A busy July led to her and husband Joe, who doubles as head instructor at Renzo Gracie Pearland and is a high-level competitive submission grappler in his own right, nixing the trip. (“Maybe next year,” she says.)

With her 41st birthday later this month, Murphy expects to be retired from fighting by the 2025 conference, the anticipation being she will fight one more time this year before walking away with one bout left on her UFC contract. She wouldn’t be an active fighter anymore, but if any such men or women — or their coaches — want a leg up on the competition, they’d be doing themselves by following her lead and learning “the f–king rules.”

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