The right person won the fight. She was hitting air most of the fight and getting countered and out jabbed most of the time at mid range. She was throwing strikes that had nothing behind them and was missing a majority of the time. She couldn't get her range after the first round. Once she got hit coming in she became tentative. Re-watch the fight and compare the first round vs all the other rounds, 1st round was the only round she clearly won and was controlling the center and pressuring the champion back throughout the 1st round. After that round the champion kept her at mid range and was landing strikes on her standing at mid range as she came in. Her main strike was the cross to the body that she threw over and over again. But any combination after that she was always a step too short and missing everything and getting caught coming in. You can see the damage in her face.
Volume is only effective if it's effective strikes, if it's throw away strikes that fighters don't even bother blocking because they are being thrown too lightly those don't really count. If she would've fought her the way she fought her in the 1st round throughout the whole fight she would've won that. She never took advantage of the times she would connect clean and just stare at her after instead of pressuring forward trying to go for the finish. She let her recover from the times she stunned her. The champion connected clean more times than the challenger and landed the better significant strikes. Challenger landed more light strikes but didn't affect the champion with a majority of those strikes and she was missing most of her combinations when she was trying to throw significant strikes. Seems like the challenger had a hard time with the reach and height after the first round. She spent most of the fight at mid range after the 1st and was constantly being hit while she couldn't hit back because of the size/reach disadvantage. She needed to rest one step back and that would've kept her out of range to get hit. She tried to rest at mid range for the champion, (which was long range for the challenger) because of the reach disadvantage. She was too used to being safe at that range from the other fighters she usually fights.
Similar to Adesanya vs Jan, he was at a range where he usually doesn't get hit but with Jan being similar sized and similar reach to Adesanya he was able to hit him at that range. That was one of the factors that made Adesanya lose the striking exchanges with Jan. He got comfortable being safe at that range from his usual opponents and with Jan he wasn't safe at that range.
“She was hitting the air most of the time and getting countered and jabbed most of the time”
First, “hitting the air” (aka whiffing) is not a factor taken into consideration when scoring a fight, because if it were fighters would only throw high percentage strikes and would encourage timidity.
But since you brought it up, Velasquez only connected on 17.4% of the significant strikes she attempted, while Kielholtz connected on 23.6% of the significant strikes she threw.
Velasquez was proportionally actually the one “hitting the air” far more frequently, despite being the bigger and rangier fighter. So what you are saying is factually incorrect.
Second, Velasquez was “countering because Kielholtz was the one pushing the action (controlling the cage), while Velasquez was backing up the entire time. Cage control is a relevant scoring criterion and Kielholtz complete control of the cage is a core reason why Velasquez did not do enough to win a single round.
If you want to describe Velasquez as “counter-punching” after only landing 46 significant strikes over twenty five minutes, despite Kielholtz attempting 427 significant strikes then fine; that means she was connecting on her counters roughly 10% of the time which is abysmally low and completely undermines the notion Kielholtz was “hitting the air” more frequently than Velasquez.
Finally, she was getting “jabbed” because the jab was the only strike Velasquez was throwing and she only connected on 38 of them over 25 minutes (1.52 a minute) which is again abysmally low. Though when you say “most of the time” that is again demonstrably inaccurate given Velasquez’s complete timidity through the entire fight; as the only thing Velasquez was doing “most of the time” was backing up and not engaging.
“Volume is only effective if its effective strikes”
This is entirely subjective, as I believe Kielholtz snapping back the head of Velasquez several times, compared to the 0 times Velasquez was able to snap Kielholtzs’ head back as clear evidence Denise was the one landing the harder shots. Again, there is no way to measure this, which is why when a fighter is out-struck over 2-1 like Velasquez it is safe to say they did not do enough to win and deserve to lose.
I will add Kielholtz is a veteran kickboxer with nearly seventy fights, naturally she has more built-up scar tissue than Velasquez who does not have very many fights. Also, Kielholtz had a black eye and a bloody nose in the fourth and fifth round, she was not bleeding profusely in any round nor was her face noticeably swollen in the first three rounds. Trying to frame it as though Velasquez inflicted some big noticeable injury is just intellectually dishonest and demonstrably inaccurate.
Finally, I can’t respond to anymore of your post because you repeatedly contradict yourself and your conception of what happened is not in line with reality. Velasquez was not doing more of anything than Kielholtz, other than backing up, she only landed 46 (1.84 per minute) significant strikes over a twenty-five-minute strike. That is abysmally low and Kielholtz landed 101 (4.04 per minute) significant strikes. There were no knockdowns either and as I said the only one who as you acknowledged whose head was repeatedly snapped back was Velasquez.
You are literally saying Kielholtz did not deserve to win the fight because she missed on some combinations, when Velasquez did not throw a single combination. Doing nothing, striking wise, is worse in MMA than doing something and occasionally missing big; doing nothing is timidity and it is supposed to be penalized.
I tried to be respectful in this response, but your post is seriously disconnected from reality, and anyone who looks at the stat sheet in the OP can see that.
