VAR Eyes at Vietnamese Arenas: One Rulebook Is Not Enough for Every Ring

Late last July, at an event in Ho Chi Minh City, I stood less than three metres from the edge of the ring as the bell closed the second round. The fighter in blue had just landed a kick to his opponent's hip and then immediately clinched him, forcing the referee to pull the two apart amid shouts from the crowd. On the big screen behind me, no slow-motion angle was clear enough to decide whether that exchange was legal. I stood right there, in the only position a referee is permitted to observe from. The first whistle blown by a camera, I heard it as though the whole world were holding its breath. But what I realised that night had nothing to do with the kick. It lay in the fact that this contest, like countless others across Vietnam every weekend, was being staged under a rulebook that neither the referee nor the crowd had ever been taught to read properly.

Over the past three years, competitive martial arts in Vietnam have exploded in a way the refereeing infrastructure could not keep up with. Professional MMA events draw thousands of spectators per night, boxing events are staged more regularly in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Muay Thai has opened more gyms, and wushu taolu still holds its place at national performance arenas. Wedged between them are traditional disciplines such as Vovinam, where athletes are judged on a performance scale and the difficulty of their forms rather than on win-loss results in the ring.

The point few outsiders notice: these four groups operate on four different systems of logic, yet in Vietnam they often share one pool of referees, one ring, and sometimes one set of judging criteria. An MMA bout ends by knockout or submission, where the promoter rewards whoever finishes the opponent. A boxing bout is scored under the ten-point must system, where every round must have a winner and a loser. A taolu competition has no opponent at all, only forms and judges scoring difficulty and performance quality. Sanda permits strikes, kicks and throws within its own framework, with its own scoring for each type of technique. Four worlds, four definitions of the word win, yet sharing one vocabulary on the scorecard.

I once sat in a referee training session in Binh Thanh District, where an instructor presented MMA scoring criteria to trainees who were used to officiating taolu events. One raised a hand: So when an athlete performs beautifully but causes no damage, do I score high or low? The room went silent. That question has no answer, because it mixes two scoring systems together. The questioner was not incompetent. The instructor was not wrong either. It was simply that nobody in the room had been handed a rulebook clear enough to separate the two.

Vietnamese referees are not weak. The problem is that we are trying to squeeze four different bars with a single clamp. When a contest is not clearly classified from the outset, every ruling that follows carries the risk of the wrong frame of reference, and that error lies not in the referee's eye but in the conceptual frame the entire contest stands inside.

Take the scorecard itself. In MMA, a fighter who wins three rounds by controlling the cage and holding his opponent down can be seen as clearly superior, because the sport prizes the ability to impose the fight. Apply that same logic to a boxing bout and the crowd will erupt, because boxing prizes the number of clean strikes and the accuracy of each punch. Apply it to taolu and the very concept of control does not exist, because there is no opponent to control. Yet on Vietnamese martial arts forums, I constantly see fans argue with a single line: He was obviously weaker, so why did he win on points? They are not wrong. They are simply using the rules of one sport to judge another.

As someone who follows VAR, I am used to a three-step process: establish the ruleset first, establish the criteria second, and only then dissect the specific incident. It sounds obvious, but without the first step, every analysis that follows collapses. A hip throw in sanda is a legal, scoring technique. Carry that throw into MMA and it remains legal but scores differently. Carry it into boxing and it is a clear foul. Carry it into taolu and it belongs to nothing at all. One action, four rulings. What decides right and wrong, then, is not the strike but the frame of rules we choose to view it through.

That is why I rarely trust summaries of the Vietnamese referees are just terrible variety. It is like criticising a general practitioner for not performing heart surgery as well as a cardiologist. The systemic problem is that we hand one person the responsibility of four specialities, then act surprised when they make mistakes. I once sat at ringside for a bout in which the referee was pilloried for a week afterwards. Watching the tape at home, I saw that he had done exactly what the rules of his sport required. But the crowd was carrying the rules of a different sport in their heads. Both sides were honest. Only the rulebook was in chaos.

One more technical detail is routinely overlooked: how throws are scored. In sanda and MMA, a successful throw can swing an entire round, because it demonstrates control over the opponent's body. In boxing, any grappling action is a foul, and the referee may deduct a point. In taolu, a fall may cost points for loss of balance. Three readings of the same movement of the body, three utterly opposite outcomes, and there is no single book in Vietnam currently being used to teach all three to the same person.

The natural reaction of the majority is to demand more technology: more cameras, more VAR, more big screens in every arena. I understand that desire, and I myself earn my living from VAR. But adding cameras to a contest that has not been clearly classified only multiplies the arguments. Four camera angles help nothing when all four are asking the wrong question.

Technology does not create criteria; it only makes criteria more visible. If the criteria are chaotic, technology will magnify that chaos onto the big screen for the whole arena to see.

What worries me more is the pressure from the crowd. At one event, when I announced a ruling after reviewing the tape, I received both praise and abuse from both sides. The referee blows the whistle, but the fans are the ones who score last. No rulebook can protect a neutral ruling from a crowd convinced it already knows the rules. I once saw a fighter branded as favoured simply because the organiser had not publicly announced the scoring criteria in Vietnamese before the bout. He had won according to the rules, yet lost in the hearts of the crowd. And once trust has shattered, no slow-motion replay can weld it back together.

I remember sitting behind a monitor, watching one collision seventeen times. Each viewing, I changed my mind a little. I understand that the referee's eye fluctuates the same way, except they do not get seventeen viewings. They get one second. We judge them with a whole week of rewinding, while they decide in a single breath.

If I were to propose one reform, it is small and cheap: every event must publicly post its ruleset and scoring criteria in Vietnamese on the information board, before the fighters step into the ring. When the whole arena is taught to read the same rulebook, the referee's ruling will be a little less lonely. And I still ask myself, when will Vietnamese viewers stop judging one fight by the rules of another?