Sean Strickland stalked Paulo Costa down across five rounds at UFC 302, picking apart his Brazilian opponent with relative ease. But you wouldn’t know that’s how the fight went based on the final judges’ verdict: a split decision for Strickland.
Newark, New Jersey is hosting UFC 302 and hoo boy have the local officials made their presence known with some seriously poor reffing and judging. That extended past the prelims into the main card, and the co-main featured yet another head scratcher of a score.
Regular rotation judges Sal D’Amato and Chris Lee scored the fight 49-46 and 50-45 for Sean Strickland respectively. New Jersey and New York judge Dave Tirelli? 49-46 in favor of Paulo Costa.
What could Tirelli have seen that would justify this score? Strickland outstruck Costa heavily, doubling Costa’s significant strike count across multiple rounds. Costa rallied in the fifth, only to get punk’d by Sean in the final minute as “Tarzan” listened to his coach and ‘released the dog.’
This isn’t Tirelli’s first ridiculous scorecard at a UFC event. He’s been the dissenting judge in a number of eyebrow raising incidents. At UFC 244, Darren Till got two 30-27 scores against Kelvin Gastelum. Tirelli had it 30-27 for Gastelum.
As the UFC heads to more regions based on host fees and not competent fight commissions, we’re going to be seeing more amateur hour scorecards and decisions. Fortunately, the right guy still ended up winning. Unfortunately, nothing will be done about these egregious scorecards that keep getting handed in.