UFC Fight Night 164: Co-main events between Shogun Rua and Paul Craig ends in split draw

R. Nath
The co-main event
The co-main event

The co-main event featuring MMA legend Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Paul Craig ended in a Split Draw.

The first round saw a good back-and-forth exchange, with Paul Craig doing a good job of holding his own. The Brazillian's skill level difference, however, was evident in the second round as Craig was in a compromising position in the ground most of the time. However, credit where it's due to Craig, who managed to survive the onslaught of round 2.

With that said, the feeling heading into the third round was that it could be anyone's fight. Shogun decided to move further in the third and final round as he was controlling the pace, landing shots and had Craig on his back.

With 15 seconds left, Paul Craig started unloading and even got the takedown, but there was too little time to do anything from it. The feeling seemed to be that Shogun did enough to secure the win, but the scorecards revealed that one judge scored it for Shogun and the other for Craig. The third one scored it as a draw and the overall result was declared as a split draw.

Shogun said after the fight that he thought he won, but it's hard to complain about the result as underwhelming as it is. Shogun was worse for wear as he took far more damage to the face. Craig excelled in the aspects of speed and power but it wasn't enough to get the win.

UFC may need to run this fight back for a more decisive result. Both men seemed disappointed with the result.

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