- UFC commentator insists Volkanovski won three of five rounds on Sunday, and should have been crowned new lightweight champ
- ‘Oh my god. Listen to the crowd. One of those scorecards was crazy,’ Rogan says after controversial Perth main event
Joe Rogan has weighed in on Sunday’s UFC 284 main event controversy, insisting Alex Volkanovski should have been crowned the new lightweight champion.
Islam Makhachev retained his title with a unanimous decision win over featherweight champ Volkanovski, who climbed up a division in his home country in Perth.
Two judges gave the Russian scores of 48-47, while the other scored the five-round fight 49-46.
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“He [Makhachev] lost that fight, I believe,” UFC commentator Rogan said, watching from his home studio in Texas during a fight companion for the event on his Spotify podcast with former UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub, jiu-jitsu coach Eddie Bravo, and comedian Bryan Callen.
“We were convinced, we might have to watch it. I don’t think we were biased. In my eyes, I thought it was 3-2 [three rounds for Volkanovski]. Oh my god, this sucks.
“Listen to the crowd. One of those scorecards was crazy. It’s hard – we’re watching it, we’re not scoring it legitimately. We’re talking s*** and we’re drinking but it seems to me he won three rounds.”
Schaub insisted that Volkanovski “got robbed” after landing 70 significant strikes against Makhachev, whose 13 previous UFC opponents had landed a combined 112.
“I gotta think the online world is going crazy,” Rogan added. “It’s hard. I don’t want to be disrespectful. I’m one of the biggest Islam Makhachev [advocates] ever. I was saying before that he was the guy that everybody was avoiding.
“But this was a high level of difficulty and I feel like he should’ve lost. We were 100 per cent convinced [it would be] ‘and new’.”
After re-watching the fight, Volkanovski insisted he won the second, third and fifth rounds.
“It was a close fight, but what can you do,” he said in a post-event press conference at the RAC Arena. “I could’ve done more. I can be hard on myself. I’m disappointed.
“There were positions were I said ‘he’s not strong’. I’m not being disrespectful. Maybe he was baiting me, but I didn’t capitalise straight away. which I should’ve and I started realising that later on.
“I could’ve done more. We ended up scrambling, so I got on top and said ‘let’s go all out, I reckon I can do something’. Maybe I could’ve done that earlier.
“I’ll do some research but it’s pretty clear I could’ve won the fight. That’s why I’m being hard on myself.”
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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