**** that fight

After being poked in the eye twice "on accident," you knew that eye was going to be attacked.

Wouldnt give him a title shot for that snooze fest.

LOL. I actually thought the same thing during the fight. Too bad it wasn't 5 rounds.

Pettis definitely has problems with his ground game, no doubt, but Alvarez was not trying to finish or hurt Pettis at all. I don't mind fights that are dominated by grappling if they are trying to get into position to hurt or finish their opponent.

I'd deny Alvarez a title shot out of spite for that crap, let him be a gatekeeper for a while, and if he loses a few fights, cut his ass.

I agree with you 100% on this, man. Unfortunately for us, the judges score takedowns even if they don't lead to anything but control, which ****ing blows. However, it also means that if you're one of the most dynamic kickers in the game, you need to ****ing learn how to defend TDs because people are going to resort to that against you.

Pettis was barely taken down. It was just holding/stalling on the cage while not threatening at all. meh

Here we go...

He spent the 3rd round on his back. :(

Even if I didn't have any rooting interest going into this fight, Cruz coming out to Nate Dogg's "Nobody Does it Better" then Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" immediately followed up by Dillashaw coming out to some garbage RHCP would firmly put me in Cruz' corner.

As it stands, I'm rooting for Cruz anyways.

Who do you think Urijah wants to win? Haha.

Somebody has cup issues...

Cruz is very slick

I don't know who won that 1st round

I enjoyed that first round..even Match as of now

My adrenaline was going that whole round. What a ****ing matchup.

Brotatochip...

That round made up for the last fight.

I think Cruz buy can't really argue that point cause it could of been TJ

TJ needs to calm down, it's 5 rounds man!

I don't know who won that round either, so I assume its probably 19-19?

Cruz is such a God Damn weird fighter to watch. Was he always this slick?

You have to think Cruz took the 2nd due to TDs. And, yeah, his elusiveness has always been his claim to fame.

Mike annoys the **** out of me sometimes.

Cruz definitely took that round

Cruz clearly won round 3. Who knows on the first 2 rounds

Cruz got 2nd, 1 and 3 tossups.

I leaned towards Cruz in R1, tossup R2, Cruz R3, but if you told me it was 2-1 either way so far I'd believe it.

I hope Dominick's knee is OK. ****.

Should be a good final round. TJ will go ****ing nuts I suspect!

I think TJ took 4

Dillashaw took 4 easy. Thinking 2-2.

TJ won round 4. They each won a round, and who knows about the first 2 rounds

ditto. At least 1-1 with 2 who the hell knows rounds

Agreed. Round 5 will decide the winner.

Good fight.

I DON'T KNOW WHO WON THIS ****ING FIGHT

TJ IMO.

I have it 48-47 Dillashaw, but the scores could be anywhere. This is a very hard fight to score.

I got 3-2 Dillashaw. Wouldnt be shocked to see a split either way.

Cruz 3 for sure..TJ 4 and 5..what to do with the first 2..I say TJ will win the decision

I'd give it to TJ, but that might be because I prefer his style more that Cruz's.

Cruz can legit barely walk.

Cruz is such a tough mother****er. That leg is gonzo. It's obvious. Yet he was bouncing like crazy right till the end.

Wow

Wow...

Crazy shit, man.

Wow. 49-46 Cruz?

I had it Cruz 3-2, but could've seen it the other way.

Hopefully Cruz will be able to defend his belt and not have to go on the shelf again.

Don't know how you get that

That score is kinda tough for me to see, but I could see 48-47 for Cruz. I'm fine with the decision, only 2 rounds were clear. 3 of those rounds were a mystery

Kenny Florian burn. OUCH. Hahaha.

I agree with everything TJ is saying.

Yup.

Oh well, not the first time I didn't agree with the judges. At least it wasn't PPV...

Title History updated

So, going into round 5 Cruz was up 3-1 on two scorecards and just needed to survive.

Had Cruz 3-2. Pretty happy for Alvarez even though I thought he'd get TKo'd.

Alvarez in his prime would have been ****ing awesome to watch in the UFC.

How the hell did that judge give Cruz 4 and 5?

I could understand r4 (like I can understand Machida winning the first Shogun fight) but I have no idea how a judge could give r5 to Cruz.


These ****ing judges are terrible.

That fight seems to throw that whole you have to beat the champ to take the belt thing right out the window. I wanted Cruz to win but I just couldn't see Cruz winning. Didn't think he did enough. Especially later to end the fight. 49-46 in favor of both fighters? Interesting....

I had 3 clearly for Cruz, 4 clearly for TJ, and I won't argue with 1, 2, or 5. Even within those very lenient and forgiving boundaries, two of the judges were still totally ****ing bonkers.

I don't think I've ever seen a split decision where two cards were 49-46.

I still don't get it, it makes me wonder what instructions the judges get when asked to judge a fight. Evidently many of us are looking at something different than the judges are judging by.

I had TJ 3-2, but I could also see it going 3-2 Cruz.

Cruz's leg wasn't actually hurt by Dillashaw's kicks. He has plantar fasciitis, and hasn't kicked in camp for months.

I'd still love to understand what the judges saw that we didn't. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just interested in understanding what they think matters and what they think matters less.

While I'm not lost on the art of fighting (years of wrestling and coaching wrestling), I still think that "backing up" needs to be factored in. While the opposite of riding time in wrestling (which I hate BTW), I think the amount of time a fighter spends backing-up should count against them. Much akin to fleeing does. So while I help no favor for either of the two, the constant backing-up "technique" will always lead me to not like that person as much.

What I think Cruz did do very well was take TJ down. So it's not like I didn't see him doing well, he was awesome at the takedown, but he backed-up so much I thought he was over the line and fleeing. And being the larger fighter, it's compounded a bit.

Anyway, congrats to Cruz, he evidently did some things the judges liked, and that's all that matters when the fight goes the distance.

This is hilarious

https://streamable.com/gs73

The guy who asked the question was Duane Ludwig, who is Dillashaw's coach. Thats why Dana smirked and the room laughed when he said "well, Mr. member of the media"

Pulling a move like that (unless planned and staged), it sounds like the TJ camp isn't too happy with the decision.

In the first 20 days of 2016, USADA has conducted 120 tests on UFC athletes

Have any of the women ever been busted?

With the UFC? The only time I ever heard was someone tested positive for MJ in competition in Texas, but that doesn't really count because it was positive under the absurdly strict, low threshold for a positive test that Texas uses, but would not have been a positive test in NV or under USADA.

Well, this is an unmitigated God Damn disaster. Werdum is out of UFC 196 due to injury. the UFC lost their super bowl weekend heavyweight championship fight less than 2 weeks before the event.

edit: lol, Werdum says he hurt both his foot and his back. 8 weeks ago, he posted this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/-dDgx8JJSc/

UFC 196 has been moved to FS1. Not sure yet if Hendricks is going to headline it.

Without the HW title fight, that was going to be an awful PPV card, but by the standards of free TV, thats a pretty good card.

edit: Hendricks-Wonderboy is the main event

Nate Diaz offered to fight Pettis to save the PPV, and the UFC seriously still considered it as late as this morning before ultimately deciding to just downgrade to free TV.

Other people are talking about Jon Jones vs Miocic for the real (not interim) HW title, but that was never a serious consideration for obvious reasons.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/najibfadlalla">@najibfadlalla</a> OMFG!!! Ur so stupid I actually WANT u to cancel FP. Do it right now!!</p>&mdash; Dana White (@danawhite) <a href="https://twitter.com/danawhite/status/691698051551858688">January 25, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Can you imagine if the president or CEO of the NFL or MLB did this?

Jose Aldo released a statement saying he will not accept any fight other than a title shot or a rematch with Conor (if for some reason he's no longer the champ). He'll sit out and wait over a year if he has to.

That carries about 0 weight with the UFC.

The card in 2 weeks is now a UFC Fight Night. UFC 197 is now renumbered to UFC 196. Presumably they are going to add another PPV before July to keep that card as UFC 200