It really wasn't that close, it was competitive, but they massaged the fight stats and the commentary blew Suga during the fight to make it seem closer than it really was. That's why 95% of the media and 95% of pro fighters believed Yan to win.
I wrote a whole thread doing a play-by-play breakdown of the scoring years back:
The MMAnalyst Scoring Breakdown - Yan vs. O'Malley Rounds 1 & 3
FIGHT METRIC STATS
SUGA = 23 Significant Strikes
YAN = 19 Significant Strikes
REAL STATS
SUGA = Landed 14 and 5 were significantly damaging
YAN = landed 21 and 10 were significantly damaging
KEY SUMMARY POINT
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.
I gave Suga the 3rd round even though that round is also incredibly close, so I'm not trying to be blind to effective offense because of fighter bias.
But I could care less about what "plenty of people thought" when they can't articulate that thought process - plenty of people thought Machida beat Shogun in the first fight, or Lawler beat Condit, or Paddy beat Gordon, and so on and so on. In every bad decision there is always a vocal minority, which also refuses to acknowledge that it's a minority and think that just by existing and not being able to articulate their position is a validation. As if we are debating what tastes better, pizza or tacos, as if it's a completely subjective interpretation of reality. It's ridiculous, if you want to argue why Suga won then explain why, don't just say "I thought he won" because that's not an argument it's just an opinion.
I was just explaining the circumstances behind what he fight got made. Uriah was a huge name and had just come back and KO'd Simon in a minute and was negotiating to get another title shot/run at the title. They told him to fight the guy they thought would be the next champion in order to do so.
I never said I was ok with Aldo getting the title shot.
Didn't Suga get his #1 contender fight off an eye-poke NC versus Pedro Munhoz, a fight in which he lost the first round and did almost nothing?
That's just how the game works, when the UFC wants to push certain fighters they get opportunities that others don't deserved or not.
Both Aldo and Suga are examples of someone losing a fight but still getting rewarded with a title shot off it because of name-value/UFC hype machine.
My point was that Yan was body-bagging those opponents, it wasn't him crawling off the mat concussed and having gone through a blender and not believing he won a fight.
If you can't see the difference between how those fights ended it's just bias.
Suga is also an amazing fighter. Having a competitive fight with Yan is an amazing effort. But I hate being told by the UFC to not believe my own lying eyes. We all know what we saw and it was a competitive fight with a clear winner that wasn't Suga.
Complete speculation on how Suga would've done versus Aldo, that likely is a super-competitive fight.
Styles make fights, Yan is a short/stocky slow-building fighter, not a tall/rangy out-fighter. Yan basically won the first fight in an amazing performance before having the ultimate brain-fart and getting a DQ when he had already basically won. Then he got out-grappled for half a fight by one of the best grapplers in the lighter weight classes of all-time and still turned the fight around and arguably won it (split-decision and by PRIDE rules, Street Rules, would've won it).
Suga got to fight him coming off of 3 camps/3 fights in a year on short-notice on Suga's home turf while Suga had a 10-month layoff to prepare for the fight.
But yes Suga did better against Aljo. So what? We are talking about Suga vs. Yan, completely different fight. When you don't have an argument to articulate changing the subject is a good tactic.
Instead of wasting time discussing other match-ups, other situations, other hypotheticals, please explain in detail why you believe Suga beat Yan. I'm all the more happy to hear the argument and take it in fairly, I just haven't heard a good one yet because I actually re-watched the first round multiple times and strike-by-strike calculated what happened and it's not close, it's competitive, meaning Suga didn't get washed out in the round but was nowhere near close to winning it.
