Former referee and current Bellator color commentator “Big” John McCarthy believes the judges missed the boat on the opening round of Israel Adesanya vs. Yoel Romero.
Adesanya put his UFC middleweight championship on the line against Romero this past Saturday night (March 7). This was Adesanya’s first undisputed title defense. “The Last Stylebender” ended up earning the unanimous decision victory over Romero in an uneventful bout.
‘Big’ John Says Judges Missed The Boat On Adesanya vs. Romero
Taking to his Weighing In podcast with co-host Josh Thomson, McCarthy expressed his belief that the opening round of Adesanya vs. Romero should’ve been scored 10-10 (h/t BJPenn.com).
“The first round should have been 10-10. And the reason it should have been 10-10—even though I know it’s not going to be because Yoel landed that big shot—is because neither guy deserved to win the round. When you have a problem scoring a fight is when they give you nothing. They gave the judges basically nothing. Yoel landed one shot and you saw Izzy blinking his eye. It was because of probably the corner of the glove or knuckle kind of went in his eye. Did it damage Izzy? No, it didn’t damage him, but he reacted to it, that’s saying it had an effect. And so I knew Yoel was going to get that first round. So he gets the first round,” McCarthy said.
Adesanya and Romero have different takes as to why their fight failed to live up to exceptions. The UFC middleweight champion believes that Romero didn’t want to engage. “The Soldier of God” on the other hand, feels Adesanya was the one who wasn’t willing to fight.
UFC president Dana White has said he thinks Adesanya did what he had to do while Romero was lackadaisical. Paulo Costa, who is expected to challenge Adesanya next, thinks the champion should take the blame.
Do you agree with “Big” John McCarthy?
