

The outcome of UFC 104 was such a foregone conclusion Saturday night that I nearly turned the channel.
Through five rounds, in my mind, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua had put together a brilliant tactical fight. No, he didn’t level Lyoto Machida – a man many of us thought, at least a little, couldn’t be touched inside a cage – but, he did land more shots than Machida did. And, he did it with some vicious leg kicks that slowed the Dragon, known for his elusiveness, down and made him easy to hit.
Shogun dominated, and at times in the fifth and final round looked like he might just be toying with Machida a bit. He was the aggressor for much of the fight, save a few times when Machida moved forward with a flurry. Really, it was as clear cut as could be. Shogun was back and in a big way.
Then, the results from the judges came back, they raised Machida’s hand, a unanimous decision of all things, and strapped the belt right back on the guy who brought it to the octagon. The question is, what happened?
Check out the FightMetric stats on the bout: Rua landed 82 shots to Machida’s 42. Almost double. He landed 17 shots to the head to Machida’s 14, and he landed 49 leg kicks to Machida’s 4. FightMetric scored the bout 49-47 for Rua. So, why didn’t the judges?
The most obvious answer is, the judges simply didn’t know what they were looking at. They took the power of five rounds of solid leg kicks foregranted, ignored the fact that Shogun had hobbled Machida and, well … let’s be honest about this, the judges were horrible in this one. There is no real excuse other than to say they have to do better. It’s not a good thing for MMA when one man clearly beats the other and doesn’t get the decision.
Dana White has since said a rematch is imminent. Credit him for that decision. It’s the only right thing that could have been done in this situation.
More UFC 104 thoughts
Stefan Struve won “Submission of the Night,” Patrick Barry and Antonio Hardonk won “Fight of the Night,” and Barry also won “Knockout of the Night.” Each fighter earned an extra $60,000 for the awards with Barry getting an extra $120,000 for winning two awards… Dana White said Anthony “Rumble” Johnson would have won “Knockout of the Night” had he made weight. Johnson missed weight by five pounds. Still, as embarrassing as that is, he was impressive, scoring a knockout of Yoshiyuki Yoshida at 0:41 of the first round… Joe Stevenson’s ground and pound was pretty vicious in his win over Spencer “The King” Fisher… The stoppage in the Cain Velasquez-Ben Rothwell fight was ill-timed however, Velasquez dominated and still had Rothwell in a bad way.
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