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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
The main event of UFC on Fox 7 on Saturday night showcased an issue that has become fairly prevalent in the world of mixed martial arts. As the fight wore on between Gilbert Melendez and Ben Henderson, it was becoming increasingly clear that opinions were varying wildly on just who was ahead, and how the first three rounds should have been scored.
If you looked online, there seemed to be zero consensus as to where the fight stood into the Championship rounds, and UFC commentator Joe Rogan was expressing similar doubt as to the clarity of the opening frames. Yet, in between rounds three and four, Melendez's corner was in his ear, telling him that they were up three rounds and that he was well ahead.
Fast forward to the end of round five, and it appeared to Melendez's camp that he had clearly won. So it came as a massive shock when Henderson's name was announced as the split decision winner, and still UFC Lightweight Champion.
The issue at hand is that each of the final four rounds was up in the air. Some had Henderson winning all four of those rounds, others thought Melendez edged two to three of them. Others thought Henderson may have squeaked out three of the last four to win the decision, but there's little consensus on which rounds were his.
That's the thing: almost everyone watching the fight had a different opinion on what they were seeing play out. That includes the judges, who all turned in wildly different scorecards. So why would Melendez's corner tell him he was up three into the final two rounds?
One of the biggest problems with Melendez's performance on Saturday night was that he had no sense of urgency late. With his corner telling him he was well ahead, he didn't attack, he got complacent, and he admitted as much after the fact.
"I thought I won the first two and the fifth for sure," Melendez said at the post-fight press conference. "I took my foot of the gas a little after the second. I thought it was going to come to the last round, and I thought I won the last round. Ben's a stud what can I say."
That fifth round was also a point of contention for many, with some giving Henderson's connections and significant strikes the edge over Melendez pressing the pace a bit more. But it again came down to no sense of urgency on his part to do more.
And that comes back to the advice of his corner, and it's something we've seen multiple times from the Cesar Gracie camp. Just look at Nate Diaz's fight against Henderson in December, where much of Nick Diaz's advice consisted of him telling Nate that he was ahead and doing well, despite being more clearly behind than Melendez was.
The same can be said for the elder Diaz's bout with Carlos Condit for the Interim Welterweight Championship the year before. He lost a close fight, but he and his corner felt he was ahead, saying as much throughout the fight, and expressing indignation at the ultimate decision handed down.
It's not a problem confined to the Cesar Gracie team. We see it quite often from fighters and corners in close fights, where instead of expressing any concern that they could be down and need to finish a fight, they feel they're up and don't do everything possible to win in the final frame.
Now, that's not to say something like open scoring would be the answer, because the telling example against that also came on Saturday night in the boxing world.
On Showtime, a highly anticipated fight between Saul "El Canelo" Alvarez and Austin Trout took place from Texas, where a very pro-Alvarez crowd of 40,000 was in attendance. That fight featured semi-open scoring, where the corners were informed of the official judges scores at the end of the fourth and eighth rounds, so they knew where their respective fighters stood.
But open scoring doesn't mean better scoring, and at the end of the eighth round of what most believed to be a close fight, Alvarez was instead much further ahead on the judges scorecards. Because his corner knew it, and because Trout's corner knew it, one fighter was able to coast (though he didn't entirely) while the other knew he had to do something drastic. However, it's near impossible to pull off that dramatic comeback if your opponent is aware of how ahead he is and can do anything to avoid that happening.
Bringing it back to MMA, the solution isn't open scoring and letting both corners know exactly where they're at. The mystery is kind of the point. In close fights, you can't be sure how the judges have scored things, and for a corner to assure their fighter that they're well ahead when that simply may not be true, they're doing a great disservice to them.
That's just one of the main factors in Melendez's loss on Saturday night. He didn't fight with urgency down the stretch, didn't have any desperation in his actions when he may well have been down 3-1 into the fifth round, and that ultimately led to what he would call a "heartbreaking" loss.
It's just an unfortunate result, because Melendez proved that he's every bit as good as he and his team have felt in the past, as he was right there with Henderson every step of the way. But he needed to be just a little bit better, and he might well have been had they not given him that ill-timed assurance.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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