Former pound for pound superstar and ex WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Torres battled it out with fast-rising contender Demetrious Johnson at UFC 130. After three rounds of highly skilled and entertaining combat, the judges awarded the win to Johnson. All three cards read 29-28 for Johnson.

Even though all the judges agreed, I however do not. Johnson may have spent more time in top position which to the untrained eye might constitute winning the fight, but Torres spent more time in control of the fight and was the only fighter to come at all close to finishing.

Effective grappling is judged by considering the amount of successful executions of a legal takedown and reversals. Examples of factors to consider are take downs from standing position to mount position, passing the guard to mount position, and bottom position fighters using an active, threatening guard.

In the first two rounds against Demetrious Johnson, Miguel Torres embodied the definitions in the scoring criteria for using an active, threatening guard. Unfortunately, he also proved the painful reality that most judges and many fans believe the top position to be “dominant” by sheer default.

The simple question is this: is any fighter on earth really in a “dominant position” if they’re lodged inside Demian Maia’s guard? How about Shinya Aoki’s or Roger Gracie’s?

The critical turning point in the entire art of fighting — not just combat sports — was Royce Gracie finishing his opponents from the position the populace foolishly deemed as weak and vulnerable. It’s mind boggling that while everything in the sport evolves at light speed, we have forgotten the one lesson that triggered mixed martial arts as we know it today.

The mentality of damning a guard player as automatically losing has made fighting off your back a position to avoid at all costs. The end result is that if you are using your guard, you must finish (not just threaten) with a submission, sweep or reverse to regain the top position, or escape out of it.

The net effect of this type of ignorant judging bias against the guard game is to discourage fighters from working on advanced guard techniques and instead spend all their training time on scrambling back to their feet for worse kickboxing.

Torres never stopped attacking or threatening from the bottom position, he even sweep Demetrious Johnson directly to mount. At no point in the fight was Torres defending and the exact opposite can be said about Johnson.

Other than escaping from so many of Torres’ attacks, it’s hard to see what Johnson did to that constituted winning the fight.