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Max Holloway fought Alexander Volkanovski in a long-awaited rematch in the co-main event of UFC 251. Volkanovski defeated Max Holloway in their first encounter to become the UFC Featherweight Champion, however, it was a very close contest.
Their rematch at UFC 251 ended in controversy as the judges scored the fight in favor of Alexander Volkanovski. However, the majority of the MMA community including the likes of Jorge Masvidal, Daniel Cormier and many others believed that The Blessed One won the fight. Even the UFC president, Dana White firmly believed that Max Holloway won the bout.
MMA fans are fuming at Volkanovski and the judges because of the result, however, saying Holloway was robbed is a far fetched statement.
Now, the judging in the past few events and on UFC 251 was not perfect. But the rematch between Holloway and Volkanovski was very close.
The general belief among the fans is that Max Holloway won the first two rounds and Alexander Volkanovski won the final two rounds. And the third round was the topic of argument. However, as per the judges' scorecard, all three judges gave the third round to Alexander Volkanovski. And it was the fifth round that decided the winner of the fight.
Did Max Holloway win the third round?
As per the official fight stats, Volkanovski landed more strikes than Holloway. Now, that does not determine the winner of the fight as Holloway hurt Volkanovski badly on a couple of occasions in the first two rounds. However, it does go to show that The Blessed One was not robbed.
If we look at the most controversial third round, both Holloway and Volkanovski had their moments. Volkanovski started showing some urgency from the beginning of the third round and landed a couple of solid left hooks on Holloway. However, The Blessed One caught the champion with a vicious uppercut.
As per the stats on UFC's official website, Volkanovski (25 out of 52) landed more than Holloway (15 out of 47) in the third round. Now, we cannot claim that these numbers are enough to decide the winner of the third round. The damage done by the fighters should be taken into consideration. Most of the judges do not consider the octagon control and pressure while scoring the round.
Octagon control does make a fighter look more dominant, but it seems to have very less effect on the ultimate outcome on the judges' scorecards. The judges rarely consider takedown defense, which might have played a huge factor in the result of this fight. Though Max Holloway secured a few of his takedown attempts, Holloway was able to get back up without taking any further damage.
Overall, it was a close fight that could have gone either way. It's not wrong to claim that Max Holloway should have been the winner that night. But to say he was robbed would be far-fetched. At the end of the day, it was the showcase of MMA at the highest level. And we may need one more fight between these two featherweight elites to decide who is better.
