The 10-Point Must System and What It Forces
MMA bouts are scored round by round by three judges seated at different positions around the cage. Each judge must award ten points to the fighter who won the round and fewer than ten to the other, which is what the phrase 10-point must describes. A close round is scored 10-9. A round in which one fighter was clearly dominant is scored 10-8, and more lopsided scores exist for extreme cases but are used sparingly. Judges score independently and their cards are only combined at the end of the bout, which is why a fight can be scored differently by each official without any of them having made an error under the rules.
Two features of this system shape everything downstream. First, it is a per-round system rather than a cumulative one, so the margin by which a round is won mostly does not carry forward: a round won by a hair and a round won convincingly are both worth 10-9 unless the judge reaches for 10-8. Second, because rounds are scored independently and then tallied, a fighter can control the majority of the total fight time and still lose, and a fighter who was badly hurt in one round can win on the cards if the rest were narrowly theirs. Neither outcome is a malfunction. Both are what a round-based ledger produces.
