The MMAnalyst Scoring Breakdown - Yan vs. O'Malley Rounds 1 & 3

[jitzmonkey]

I quoted a common benign humorous (albeit sarcastic) meme/trope found all over the internet.

You said that you don't live at home (so assumed you're homeless since I don't know what else that would mean.)
I named the only homeless outreach org that I 'know' in San Diego (had lunch like 10-12 years ago with an attorney that did work for them.... Friend of a friend) to try to be helpful.

Subsequently defended the intent behind your thesis instead of sh-tting on it and belittling you like other users in the thread did.
Either way, I'm glad that you're not actually homeless; and hope that your hobby of recapping MMA fights blow by blow brings you happiness!

 

[Thepostersuperb]

No I'm good - I like to spend all my time at the soup-kitchen breaking down fights on the internet for trolls.

<[analyzed}>

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

Haters are transparent.

Everything I stated was facts, not hate.

There are at least 3 times he grabbed the cage and at least 3 times he hooked the gloves, on top of an absolutely vicious knuckle-deep eye poke which Yan got no recovery time from.

The projection is just astounding from some of you - you could debate the strike count, debate the strike quality, debate the scoring system.

Instead you just distract and deflect.

 

[TheHabitualLineStepper]

Real analysis and only one that matters;

O'Malley whooped his ass, left his face leaking and got the W.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

Yes, buddeh. That seems like a completely impartial statement. You were doing so well, until you threw it all away with that last sentence.

At which point am I supposed to take your opinion as being unbiased? You cast anybody that disagrees with you as being one of “them”. Which obviously means you see yourself as one of “us”.

I personally don’t have a stake, or fuck to care about that fight. I picked Yan to beat O’Malley.

But, I do know that Yan didn’t show me enough to judge him the clear winner. It hinges on round 1. And people will all judge that according to what THEY saw, or possibly even what they WANTED to see.

Emotion seems to rule the day in a lot of these close fights. And there isn’t one clear diagnostic to claim either guy won, imo.

Quote every stat imaginable. It isn’t changing my mind about what I saw. And if you literally need to rewatch a fight 100 times to come up with this “breakdown”..

How is that valid, or applicable to the 3 judges that scored it in real time? Hindsight, Monday Morning QB.. etc.

The official result is NEVER changing.

No one is truly unbiased, I even stated:

"We all have inherent bias, at least I can admit mine and try to be as objective as possible, which is why I literally re-watch the sequences as many times as possible to try and give a fair gauge on how to rate the strikes."

I would think by doing a strike-by-strike breakdown with detailed explanation of the stats and a perceptive round analysis would indicate I put some time, energy and thought into this exercise and effort and didn't just try to "reverse-engineer" a justified Yan victory.

When I do this exercise I literally have no idea who is going to be the winner or loser afterwards; I know what I thought before the re-watch/analysis and then a lot of times my perspective is completely changed by doing the exercise. That's kind of the point of it - challenge your own bias by taking a more scientific framework to analyze what happened.

When 95% of media, 90% of fighters, and 85% of fans score it for one guy and that guy isn't the "fan favorite" we have what's called an overwhelming statistical likelihood of outcomes. There are plenty clear ways to use a diagnostic to find a likely outcome. I didn't re-watch the fight 100 times, I re-watched it a few times and during the re-watch I would jump back a few seconds after each strike if it wasn't clear how hard it landed/where it landed/how much damage it did - it only took like 30 minutes lol.

At the end of the day the only thing that matters of the outcome is how the 3 judges (in this case paid directly by the UFC) score the fight. As you noted nothing is going to change what the record shows, the official result will be an O'Malley win.

Just like Sanchez beat Kampan/Pearson, Garcia beat Korean Zombie, and so on and so on.

It still doesn't mean it's not a bad decision though. You are entitled to your opinion, I just wish some of you guys would articulate your arguments better then single sentences and just resort to trolling. You at least gave me that courtesy, so much respect.

I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and perspective.

 

[kingghidrah]

Real analysis and only one that matters;

O'Malley whooped his ass, left his face leaking and got the W.

It's too late for OMalley though, his career is over after Cejudo called him the third Island Boy

He can never recover from that.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

I quoted a common benign humorous (albeit sarcastic) meme/trope found all over the internet.

You said that you don't live at home (so assumed you're homeless since I don't know what else that would mean.)
I named the only homeless outreach org that I 'know' in San Diego (had lunch like 10-12 years ago with an attorney that did work for them.... Friend of a friend) to try to be helpful.

Subsequently defended the intent behind your thesis instead of sh-tting on it and belittling you like other users in the thread did.
Either way, I'm glad that you're not actually homeless; and hope that your hobby of recapping MMA fights blow by blow brings you happiness!

You did defend my intent before returning to trolling, which is the art of the back-handed compliment, so well-done.

Your contribution to this thread has been noted, thanks for stopping by.

 

[Nightgunner05]

Just rewatched the first round again. I give the round to Yan again, but only because he got his last takedown. He got out struck in that round. He threw big shots, but 80% of them missed. Still an incredibly close round, and I still have no problem that they gave it to O’Malley.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

Just rewatched the first round again. I give the round to Yan again, but only because he got his last takedown. He got out struck in that round. He threw big shots, but 80% of them missed. Still an incredibly close round, and I still have no problem that they gave it to O’Malley.

The takedown had almost nothing to do with giving Yan the round, it didn't cause damage and he didn't land ground strikes while he had him down.

Also I don't see what you are talking about with Yan "missing 80% of shots" - from Fight Metric itself on significant strikes in Round 1 they gave Yan 61% accuracy and Suga 41% accuracy, meaning they had Yan landing at a 50% higher rate when throwing.

From my re-watch where I tried to "Zapruder" each exchange and give as fair an interpretation as possible:

TOTAL STRIKES

SUGA

Light Kicks - 6
Light Punches - 3
Medium Punches - 5
Total Strikes = 14

YAN

Light Kicks - 5
Light Punches - 6
Medium Kicks - 8
Medium Punches - 2
Total Strikes = 21

Yan outlands him 3:2 in total strikes and 2:1 in medium strikes.

If you truly believe O'Malley outstruck him please do the same exercise - watch the fight and every time a fighter lands a strike list the type of strike and rate it light/medium/heavy and then calculate the totals at the end and share your breakdown/analysis.

Then we could have a real discussion, instead of you just making blanket statements like "he got outstruck" without explaining how and why.

 

[Exarch01]

Yes, buddeh. That seems like a completely impartial statement. You were doing so well, until you threw it all away with that last sentence.

At which point am I supposed to take your opinion as being unbiased? You cast anybody that disagrees with you as being one of “them”. Which obviously means you see yourself as one of “us”.

I personally don’t have a stake, or fuck to care about that fight. I picked Yan to beat O’Malley.

But, I do know that Yan didn’t show me enough to judge him the clear winner. It hinges on round 1. And people will all judge that according to what THEY saw, or possibly even what they WANTED to see.

Emotion seems to rule the day in a lot of these close fights. And there isn’t one clear diagnostic to claim either guy won, imo.

Quote every stat imaginable. It isn’t changing my mind about what I saw. And if you literally need to rewatch a fight 100 times to come up with this “breakdown”..

How is that valid, or applicable to the 3 judges that scored it in real time? Hindsight, Monday Morning QB.. etc.

The official result is NEVER changing.

I thought about un-ignoring TS to see if he's making sense these days, but I guess from your reaction it's the same old bullshit. Like, "I'm a really, really good analysist, so if you don't agree then you're just too stupid to recognize how good my analysis is," type bullshit. So thanks for saving me the trouble.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

I thought about un-ignoring TS to see if he's making sense these days, but I guess from your reaction it's the same old bullshit. Like, "I'm a really, really good analysist, so if you don't agree then you're just too stupid to recognize how good my analysis is," type bullshit. So thanks for saving me the trouble.

I mean if you can throw away my entire original post because of trying to out-troll a troll in a follow-up post then it kind of shows your limited capacity for honest intellectual engagement.

Why not just read my original post, come to your own conclusion, and then make a fair argument explaining why I’m wrong?

I’m not saying if you disagree with my analysis you are automatically wrong, but most of the responses that disagree so far are seemingly limited to single sentences, blanket statements, trolls, etc.

At least @TempleoftheDog gave a fairly detailed response that I can respect even if he disagrees.

But why even stop by the thread to admit you didn’t read it unless to show that you have no intent to honestly engage and discuss?

Seems absurd, but you do you bro.

 

[Nightgunner05]

The takedown had almost nothing to do with giving Yan the round, it didn't cause damage and he didn't land ground strikes while he had him down.

Also I don't see what you are talking about with Yan "missing 80% of shots" - from Fight Metric itself on significant strikes in Round 1 they gave Yan 61% accuracy and Suga 41% accuracy, meaning they had Yan landing at a 50% higher rate when throwing.

From my re-watch where I tried to "Zapruder" each exchange and give as fair an interpretation as possible:

TOTAL STRIKES

SUGA

Light Kicks - 6
Light Punches - 3
Medium Punches - 5
Total Strikes = 14

YAN

Light Kicks - 5
Light Punches - 6
Medium Kicks - 8
Medium Punches - 2
Total Strikes = 21

Yan outlands him 3:2 in total strikes and 2:1 in medium strikes.

If you truly believe O'Malley outstruck him please do the same exercise - watch the fight and every time a fighter lands a strike list the type of strike and rate it light/medium/heavy and then calculate the totals at the end and share your breakdown/analysis.

Then we could have a real discussion, instead of you just making blanket statements like "he got outstruck" without explaining how and why.

Bro, you are wasting your time trying to count every single strike. No fight in the history of fighting has ever been scored that way. If we did that, then almost every fight that has gone to a decision would have to be reviewed.

For me, O’Malley’s teep kicks, and knee kicks more than made up for Yan’s kicks. Trying to say something is a medium strike or a light strike is also pointless. There is just no way you could know what was a hard punch or what wasn’t just by viewing the video. Your conclusion doesn’t even make sense anyway, because in that first round O’Malley had the only 2 clean shots to the head. That in itself was good enough to win him the striking exchanges in my opinion.

Either way none of that matters. The first round is incredibly close. One of the closest rounds I’ve seen in a while. Saying Yan was robbed makes it seem as if he was a clear winner, which he wasn’t. Another night he might have gotten the decision, but he didn’t, and based on that fight no one should have any problem with it.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

Bro, you are wasting your time trying to count every single strike. No fight in the history of fighting has ever been scored that way. If we did that, then almost every fight that has gone to a decision would have to be reviewed.

For me, O’Malley’s teep kicks, and knee kicks more than made up for Yan’s kicks. Trying to say something is a medium strike or a light strike is also pointless. There is just no way you could know what was a hard punch or what wasn’t just by viewing the video. Your conclusion doesn’t even make sense anyway, because in that first round O’Malley had the only 2 clean shots to the head. That in itself was good enough to win him the striking exchanges in my opinion.

Either way none of that matters. The first round is incredibly close. One of the closest rounds I’ve seen in a while. Saying Yan was robbed makes it seem as if he was a clear winner, which he wasn’t. Another night he might have gotten the decision, but he didn’t, and based on that fight no one should have any problem with it.

It’s an intellectual exercise is all - fights have to be scored in real time by paid old men that don’t understand fighting sitting at odd angles watching through a cage. I find it a fascinating practice to better interpret who really did more damage.

If you think O’Malleys soft push kicks and blocked/glancing teeps are the same as Yan’s super clean and powerful leg and body kicks we are seeing two different realities. We all rate strikes differently i.e. light/medium/hard - again, these are interpretive metrics to give us another data point to analyze.

Why is a nice punch to face worth so much more then a powerful body kick? Seems like your own fight judging perspective is to highly overrate punches to the head versus all other strikes, which fits in with how this fight was judged - which is fine, just most of us don’t score fights like that.

If it was “so close” why did 95% of media/90% of fighters/85% of fans score it for Yan when Suga is the fan favorite/cash cow?

What I’d really like to see would be someone who scored round 1 for Suga to do this exercise - we could then discuss which strikes I missed/miscounted or should’ve rated differently. We’d actually have the foundation for a real discussion and i’m-depth analysis.

It’s far easier to tell me I’m wrong then do the work and prove it/show me. I’m open to having my mind changed on rating certain strikes differently. But telling me Suga landed two clean punches should give him the round isn’t what I would call in-depth analysis.

 

[humdizzle]

just need to let it go. it was a close fight.

sean had a tougher chin than we thought.
his guard was also impressive from a defensive standpoint

yan continues to be a slow starter
he struggled with sean's reach
his grappling didn't amount to much damage.

 

[Nightgunner05]

It’s an intellectual exercise is all - fights have to be scored in real time by paid old men that don’t understand fighting sitting at odd angles watching through a cage. I find it a fascinating practice to better interpret who really did more damage.

If you think O’Malleys soft push kicks and blocked/glancing teeps are the same as Yan’s super clean and powerful leg and body kicks we are seeing two different realities. We all rate strikes differently i.e. light/medium/hard - again, these are interpretive metrics to give us another data point to analyze.

Why is a nice punch to face worth so much more then a powerful body kick? Seems like your own fight judging perspective is to highly overrate punches to the head versus all other strikes, which fits in with how this fight was judged - which is fine, just most of us don’t score fights like that.

If it was “so close” why did 95% of media/90% of fighters/85% of fans score it for Yan when Suga is the fan favorite/cash cow?

What I’d really like to see would be someone who scored round 1 for Suga to do this exercise - we could then discuss which strikes I missed/miscounted or should’ve rated differently. We’d actually have the foundation for a real discussion and i’m-depth analysis.

It’s far easier to tell me I’m wrong then do the work and prove it/show me. I’m open to having my mind changed on rating certain strikes differently. But telling me Suga landed two clean punches should give him the round isn’t what I would call in-depth analysis.

There would be no way of changing your mind because you rate strikes completely differently than me. To you, Yan throwing a few hard kicks is justification enough to say he won the striking exchanges, but I totally disagree. O’Malley’s kicks were just as effective as Yan’s because they kept Yan away from him. Neither of them did any damage with their kicks.

Yan threw hard shots, but most missed, and the ones that did hit were blocked. O’Malley was the only one that had strikes that landed clean in the first round.

And of course the media gave the fight to Yan. Everyone is used to a fighter getting points for taking someone down even if they do no damage. This is why I give Yan the first round also, but if we ignore the takedowns, then O’Malley wins that round for me.

 

[Shilajit]

biased and strike stats as bad as fightmetric make it hard to take this seriously

 

[jitzmonkey]

You did defend my intent before returning to trolling, which is the art of the back-handed compliment, so well-done.

Your contribution to this thread has been noted, thanks for stopping by.

Not one for passive-aggressiveness. Although some light bull busting (my initial reply) is generally consistent.
That said, since I never know who I'm chatting with online, I try to always generally be kind unless the person is being a bigot.
I'm a 'to each their own' kind of guy.

Anyway, best of luck to you, man.

Just rewatched the first round again. I give the round to Yan again, but only because he got his last takedown. He got out struck in that round. He threw big shots, but 80% of them missed. Still an incredibly close round, and I still have no problem that they gave it to O’Malley.

Thought O'Malley edged it, but wouldn't have 'been mad.'

I thought about un-ignoring TS to see if he's making sense these days, but I guess from your reaction it's the same old bullshit. Like, "I'm a really, really good analysist, so if you don't agree then you're just too stupid to recognize how good my analysis is," type bullshit. So thanks for saving me the trouble.

How do you do that in general?

Bro, you are wasting your time trying to count every single strike. No fight in the history of fighting has ever been scored that way. If we did that, then almost every fight that has gone to a decision would have to be reviewed.

For me, O’Malley’s teep kicks, and knee kicks more than made up for Yan’s kicks. Trying to say something is a medium strike or a light strike is also pointless. There is just no way you could know what was a hard punch or what wasn’t just by viewing the video. Your conclusion doesn’t even make sense anyway, because in that first round O’Malley had the only 2 clean shots to the head. That in itself was good enough to win him the striking exchanges in my opinion.

Either way none of that matters. The first round is incredibly close. One of the closest rounds I’ve seen in a while. Saying Yan was robbed makes it seem as if he was a clear winner, which he wasn’t. Another night he might have gotten the decision, but he didn’t, and based on that fight no one should have any problem with it.

This is how I saw the first round as well.
Arguably (without digressing too much) the way that the 10-9 criteria muddles the damage vs. volume aspect of scoring.
Either way, I thought that O'Malley won that first round.

Re robbery?
Exactly! Even if we "see it clearly," it's difficult to call super close rounds robberies.

(Digressing again) I wouldn't be surprised to see Yan lose a bunch of split decisions in the future due to his willingness to give up rounds and let finishes happen as opposed to pursuing them.

 

[maximus__]

A friend asked me to analyze and score Yan/O'Malley rounds 1 and 3 and I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share with all my Sherbros



I really enjoy doing breakdowns of analyzing fights in moments of individual attacks - it really helps me better understand the nuances of scoring and gives greater insight into which shots were really landing and who was really in control of the fight.

When you don't pause/re-watch/document you are kind of doing the impossible of trying to interpret so many actions and compare against each other in real-time, which is basically a seemingly impossible task to do perfectly well, everyone is really just "guessing" what they think happened if they are being honest.

Since Round 2 is clear the only rounds to score in this fight were 1 and 3 - here is my breakdown of each round including:

-List of landed attacks and rating them light/medium/heavy
-Breakdown of attacks/stat analysis
-Round analysis

***for the sake of adding a "point-scoring" element I created an arbitrary system of 1 point for a light strike, 3 for a medium and 10 for a heavy strike - this is completely made-up just to become an interpretative data point, since it's impossible to actually assign points it's just a rough system to give us something else to gauge***

Please note - this is not a perfect system, we are all going to rate strikes differently and it's tough to tell even pausing/re-watching how clean/damaging some shots are. So this is just my perspective after multiple re-watches where I literally pause and rewind repeatedly after every sequence to focus on strike accuracy/damage and rate it to the best of my ability. You might see things differently; I'm just explaining my point of view based on my perception.

ROUND 1

Suga light push kick to knee (1)
Yan medium low-kick (3)
Suga glancing/light teep (1)
Yan medium low-kick (3)
Yan light low-kick (1)
Suga medium straight (3)
Yan medium body-kick (3)
Suga light low-kick (1)
Yan medium low-kick (3)
Suga medium straight (3)
Yan light body-kick (1)
Suga light push kick to knee (1)
Suga light low-kick (1)
Suga medium straight (3)
Yan medium body-kick (3)
Yan medium low-kick (3)
Suga medium jab (3)
Yan light knee to thigh (1)
Suga medium step-though cross (3)
Yan light low kick (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Yan medium overhand (3)
Yan medium push kick to knee (3)
Yan medium hook (3)
Yan glancing light hook (1)
Yan gets takedown lands 3 or 4 light strikes at best (let's call it 3)
Suga glancing straight (1)
Yan medium low kick (3)
Suga light body teep (1)
Suga glancing straight (1)
Yan light jab (1)
Yan glancing light low kick (1)

TOTAL STRIKES

SUGA

Light Kicks - 6
Light Punches - 3
Medium Punches - 5
Total Strikes = 14
Total Points = 24

YAN

Light Kicks - 5
Light Punches - 6
Medium Kicks - 8
Medium Punches - 2
Total Strikes = 21
Total Points = 40

FIGHT METRIC STATS

SUGA = 23 Significant Strikes > landed 14 and 5 were significantly damaging
YAN = 19 Significant Strikes > landed 21 and 10 were significantly damaging

ROUND ANALYSIS

Yan is very cautious this round, gives O'Malley a lot of respect and both guys are using a lot of feints and trying to make reads, with O'Malley moving away and trying to get Yan to freeze in front of him to step in with punches while Yan is looking to freeze O'Malley to close distance and land low kick/body kicks primarily. Yan is clearly the far better/harder kicker and is landing those with much more authority, while O'Malley has a better feel for the boxing range early. After Yan gets a takedown late and O'Malley gets up it looks like the fight is picking up and Yan has a better feel for the range, he slips like a 7-8 punch combo from O'Malley and is starting to pressure effectively causing O'Malley to shoot a takedown at the close of the round.

Re-Watching this round it is literally impossible for me to give the round to O'Malley. He gets out-struck 21-14 (3:2) and in medium strikes 10-5 (2:1), is being walked down the entire round, the best strike of the round to me is the body kick Yan lands against the fence in the early/middle part of the round. O'Malley's offense is pretty much limited to his hands, he can't kick nearly as well as Yan and takes a lot of solid early damage to his legs.

I think this round is kind of reflective to the inherent biases judges have towards punches/head strikes - O'Malley lands 8 punches to the head (5 medium/3 light) and Yan lands 8 punches to the head (2 medium/6 light) so in terms of punches to the head O'Malley does better. But when we factor in the kicks O'Malley lands only 6 light kicks (2 of which are push kicks to knee which barely do any damage) while Yan lands 13 kicks (8 medium/5 light) some of which are really clean and powerful.

Never once does Yan look stunned or hurt and he is the aggressor the entire round. It's just shady to be honest, this isn't like Sterling/Yan 2 where the first round is so low-volume and tentative that it really comes down to interpreting one or two strikes a certain way. This is beyond clear - Yan is coming forward the whole round, out-landing his opponent 3:2, and landing the bigger strikes from those 2:1. He also gets the only takedown/extended control in the round even if it only lasts under a minute.

Clear round for Yan for me.

ROUND 3

Suga glancing body kick (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Yan light glancing hook (1)
Yan medium jumping switch kick > partially blocked (3)
Suga light body teep (1)
Suga medium low kick (3)
Suga light jab (1)
Yan glancing light low kick (1)
Suga light low kick (1)
Suga light push kick to knee (1)
Yan medium body kick (3)
Yan glancing straight to the body (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga light low kick (1)
Yan glancing light uppercut (1)
Yan glancing light hook (1)
Suga heavy step knee (10) > cuts Yan
Suga medium hook (3)
Suga medium partially blocked head kick (3)
Suga throws a three punch combination which is all partially blocked but does get through, calling it 3 light strikes (3)
Suga medium knee (3) > this could've been devastating but comes up too high so doesn't go directly into Yan's head, instead it goes up past it but definitely does damage
Yan medium body kick (3)
Yan heavy hook (10)
Yan medium left (3)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga medium straight (3)
Yan heavy counter hook (10)
Suga light jab (1)
Yan medium low kick (3)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga heavy head-kick (10) > even though partially block it clearly hurts Yan and causes him to decide to shoot
Suga lands 3 light elbows from the clinch (3)
Yan lands 3 light clinch strikes (3)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga medium straight (3)
Suga medium straight (3)
Yan heavy left counter (10)
Yan medium knee to the thigh (3)
Suga light teep to the body (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Suga light jab (1)
Yan medium leg kick (3)
Yan lands five light ground strikes from top position to close the round (5)

TOTAL STRIKES

SUGA

Light Kicks - 6
Light Punches - 16
Medium Kicks - 3
Medium Punches - 4
Heavy Kicks - 2
Heavy Punches - 0
Total Strikes = 31
Total Points = 63

YAN

Light Kicks - 1
Light Punches - 12
Medium Kicks - 6
Medium Punches - 2
Heavy Kicks - 0
Heavy Punches - 3
Total Strikes = 24
Total Points = 67

FIGHT METRIC STATS

SUGA = 40 significant strikes/46 total strikes > only landed 31 strikes in total, with 7 medium attacks and 2 heavy attacks
YAN = 15 significant strikes/24 total strikes > this is actually pretty accurate for once, landed 24 total strikes with 8 medium attacks and 3 heavy attacks

ROUND ANALYSIS

This is a hell of a round, one of the best of the year! Even if you hate Suga as a personality (which I do) you've gotta respect his toughness and skills. He makes this an insane back and forth round by coming out hot and putting a lot of volume in front of Yan and is doing a great job keeping him at the edge of range.

Ironically it's when he cuts/hurts Yan that he lets him back in the fight - it's kind of a replay of the second round where he stuns Yan with a heavy punch and thinks he can just walk in and lace him again and eats a massive counter. Yan being so short means he wants to trap you against the cage or get you to walk in on him if you have a reach advantage, he has a lot of problems with getting O'Malley to attack him or sit against the cage so there is a lot of range-finding techniques and feints needed to close the space to set-up shots. Once Suga hurts Yan he gets laced by a ridiculous two-piece combination that is absolutely brutal and shows a hell of chin. Yan really only gets the looks he really wants after Suga tags him clean and thinks he can build on it, the range/reach advantage is so huge that in a 3 round fight Suga can use all his gas tank on defensive movement to negate these situations more. If this went 2 more rounds I don't think Suga would be able to stay on his bicycle; he took a really smart approach and banked on forcing Yan to lead and not get stuck against the fence and it worked really well at times.

Looking at the stats O'Malley outworks and out-lands Yan and does comparative damage (7 medium/2 heavy vs. 8 medium/3 heavy). Does the extra 10 light strikes make up for an extra medium/heavy attack from Yan? It's really a matter of opinion and how you rate those strikes.

I scored the round for O'Malley originally and on rewatch I'm torn, I feel it could go either way but I do lean towards O'Malley since he had more sustained offense in spots and Yan wasn't able to really extend the sequences where he hurt O'Malley with counters. However, a lot of this had to do with O'Malley grabbing the cage/hooking the gloves to prevent takedowns, stop GnP, and also escape against the cage late.

But if we disregard the cheating it's a coin-flip round that kind of comes down to perception of damage; does getting cut from a clean knee to the face equal a huge counter hook that stuns you and makes you lose equilibrium and retreat? It's impossible distinction to make, I think however you score this round is fine and based on people's preference to score blood more heavily it's not surprising they went with O'Malley.

To me Yan definitely got robbed, he had two clear rounds and then a coin-flip round that leaned ever so slightly towards Suga. O'Malley over-performed and put on a great fight, so I think it's one of those situations where when someone exceeds the expectation they get more credit then they deserve. Most of us thought Yan would eventually break O'Malley and he didn't, he ate tons of huge shots to the legs/body/head and stayed competitive and even hurt Yan and won the last round. But that doesn't mean he didn't clearly lose the first round and it's not even really debatable.

Then when you take all the cheating into account, with the number of times he grabbed the cage/hooked the gloves/eye-poked O'Malley really deserved to lose this fight. It definitely pays to cheat if the UFC wants you to win lol.

This is exactly how I saw the fight. I still gave Yan the 3rd, but I thought he would win that last round because of the cut.
I have to say I do give more credit to the strikes leading to the take down. Those should definitely be considered heavier strikes as they made O'malley react in a way he was taken down.
It's sadd to see a fighter win every single scoring criteria except 1(damage or impact) for nearly an entire fight and still somehow lose it.
It really took away from what was a great performance by O'malley until it was endlessly reviewed and we all released how many times he got away with cheating.
With some recent controversies, it makes you wonder if MMA is going the way of boxing in terms of terrible decisions going to promotional favourites.

 

[TheMMAnalyst]

just need to let it go. it was a close fight.

sean had a tougher chin than we thought.
his guard was also impressive from a defensive standpoint

yan continues to be a slow starter
he struggled with sean's reach
his grappling didn't amount to much damage.

"Let it go"

My first sentence in my OP:

"A friend asked me to analyze and score Yan/O'Malley rounds 1 and 3 and I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share with all my Sherbros"



I personally don't feel that it was a close fight - the first two rounds were very clear and then the third round was razor-close.

Your other statements I agree with - Suga has a far better chin then we realized and his defensive guard work is solid. Yan did his best to start faster but it's tough when your fighting a super fast/super rangy guy with very fast linear strikes that is looking to counter. Both Yan and Suga prefer to counter but if you have height/reach you have the advantage to play that game.

The reason his grappling didn't do much damage was partially because of Suga's nice defensive work, but also because he prevented takedowns by grabbing the cage, got up from takedowns by grabbing the cage, and prevented ground strikes by hooking the gloves repeatedly.

So that kind of throws shade on how good his ground defense/TDD was to a degree.

 

[Exarch01]

Not one for passive-aggressiveness. Although some light bull busting (my initial reply) is generally consistent.
That said, since I never know who I'm chatting with online, I try to always generally be kind unless the person is being a bigot.
I'm a 'to each their own' kind of guy.

Anyway, best of luck to you, man.



Thought O'Malley edged it, but wouldn't have 'been mad.'



How do you do that in general?



This is how I saw the first round as well.
Arguably (without digressing too much) the way that the 10-9 criteria muddles the damage vs. volume aspect of scoring.
Either way, I thought that O'Malley won that first round.

Re robbery?
Exactly! Even if we "see it clearly," it's difficult to call super close rounds robberies.

(Digressing again) I wouldn't be surprised to see Yan lose a bunch of split decisions in the future due to his willingness to give up rounds and let finishes happen as opposed to pursuing them.

Click on the username to bring up their profile, then find, "ignore," and click it. Then you can't see anything they post. Could they have ignored me back? Sure. Could they be trying to reply to my posts? Maybe. I don't give a shit either way.