Nice to see the UFC down under for a change. The main event was magnificent to watch. Home arena advantage for Aussie Alex Volkanovski couldn’t push him to victory over the reigning Lightweight champ Islam Makhachev. Alex is also a featherweight UFC champ this made a fascinating contest, champ vs champ. A fight too close to call? Not necessarily. The fact that the judges saw it as a win for Islam after he was outpunched by an over 11% margin shows that judges were putting undue weight on takedowns. The bias stems from the fact that Volk didn’t have a single one all fight. I would like to think judges are former fighters as such they had their own style of fighting. I am willing to bet all of them were grapplers in their hey day. Apportioning appropriate weight to the moves is the best way to judge a fight. Volk countered the takedown attempts quite admirably from my point of view. Check out the first round , Alex spread his legs to get low center of gravity, getting close to the fence just in case Islam manages to get enough power.

Let’s face it anything that involves someone judging a performance, be it Idol, figure skating or MMA has an element of favoritism that the judge puts on that decision, especially in a close fight as this. Here is the scorecard as it was. White judge scored it 48-47, Green Judge 49-46, Yellow 48-47. Let’s focus on the Green judge who had the highest margin of victory for Islam. I must say it would be unfair to heap him with all the criticism when the other judges also gave it to Islam. What did Green judge see in round 3 that other judges didn’t see? He saw a weak round from Volk in the sense of a failed takedown attempt and failing to land any significant blows. Check out at 02:37 left, Volk was stuck on the fence for close to a minute under the waist from Islam before Alex countered with punches. It is funny no one is talking about the first two rounds which were scored unanimously against the Aussie which is were he lost the fight. It is a message to him to improve his arsenal, to work on the mat skills , work on getting the TKO not just land punches and hope for a decision.

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