The moment Ketlen Vieira was announced as the winner over Holly Holm at UFC Fight Night 206, Twitter went off in disagreement, with the dreaded R-word being tossed around so casually, which seemingly has become a thing whenever there’s a close main event or title fight these days.
Even Holm suggested she was robbed after dropping a split decision by scores of 47-48, 48-47, 48-47 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. She didn’t use the R-word, but she also didn’t have to. She flat-out said “I thought I won the fight” and “I don’t feel like it was a question.”
It was a question, though. That’s how we ended up with Vieira declared the winner.
From this writer’s standpoint, Holm clearly won Rounds 1 and 5; Vieira Round 2. All three judges agreed.
It was Rounds 3 and 4 that were up in the air – close, both women had their moments. All three judges gave Round 4 to Vieira. The deciding round in the split decision was the third, with Mike Bell and Derek Cleary scoring 10-9 for Vieira, while Sal D’Amato went the other way for Holm.
In the aftermath of such a close fight, the “Holly Holm was robbed” crowd has pointed to the fight statistics to support their belief. One number in particular fueled the Twitter machine, all but suggesting Holm should’ve won. It was even grossly peddled by ESPN MMA’s account (see below): significant strikes.
Holm almost doubled Vieira in significant strikes at #UFCVegas55 👀 pic.twitter.com/GIsDK88CjB
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) May 22, 2022
You look at that chart, you see a 112-63 advantage for Holm, and you would think she dominated the fight. But does anyone who watched truly believe Holm’s performance was a display of domination? No. Because it wasn’t, not even statistically. Those ESPN numbers are WRONG because they’re based on an unofficial “live” feed. The actual number of significant strikes landed were significantly closer at 96-85, according to official numbers from UFCStats.com.
Also, I’m not sure who needs this reminder, but even if the significant strikes had been an almost 2-to-1 discrepancy, MMA fights aren’t judged in totality. It’s a round-by-round scoring system. Overall fight statistics easily can be misleading in the same way that physical damage can be misleading.
If you think a fight outcome was a robbery, it’s because you’re misinformed or there’s a misunderstanding or you don’t know the MMA judging criteria (here you go). More often than not, it wasn’t.
The bottom line, folks, is that Vieira-Holm was a close fight. And sometimes – no, often times, almost always – a close fight is just a close fight without a robbery taking place, free of controversy.
That’s all this was.
