No you don't. You just have to beat them. I hate to give the Vin Diesel quote, but "It doesn't matter if you win by a inch or a mile, winning's winning"
I read a quote or something which I feel was attributed to a boxing referee or judge. It went something along the lines of "The moment they step into the ring there is no longer a champion or a challenger but rather two neutral combatants".
What I feel happened in this fight and Jones/Gustafsson 1 is that, rather than having the fighters start on a even footing, it was almost like a handicap was given to Hendricks and Gustafsson in their respective fights. I had GSP and Jones winning these fights which were very close. I remember my scoring for the Jones/Gustafsson fight more than the GSP one. For me, some people pick Hendricks or Gustafsson as the winner, instead of picking the winner of the fight based on the fight alone they gave Hendricks and Gustafsson the fight because they did better than they expected them to do. Both fights were very very close and could go either way but I do feel that some tilted it a little bit towards Hendricks and Gustafsson.
FWIW, I believe the rounds I had Jones taking were 1, 4 and 5. 1 and 4 being the swing ones that could go either way. 1 had very little notable actively but I thought Jones controlled it a bit more. 4 was the one that I had Gustafsson cruising along until the last 30s or so when he got hit with that elbow and Jones put it on him. I don't want to say Jones stole the round there but I felt he did so much in those 30s that he overtook Gustafsson's work and control for the other 4mins 30s of the round.
GSP-Hendricks, I think the swing round was 1. If I'm remembering correctly that's the round GSP for takedown(s) but was also beaten up with elbows along the cage digging for the takedown. I had it GSP as even with the striking there, I thought GSP controlled the action before and after. Bear in mind, I've only seen that fight once and was probably drinking at the time too so the memory might be hazy.
