5. A historic draw
The card opened with a bit of UFC history when [autotag]Chris Gutierrez[/autotag] and [autotag]Cody Durden[/autotag] fought to a unanimous draw. It wasn’t the first unanimous draw that’s ever happened, but it’s the first that did not include a point deduction.
On paper, it’s pretty straight forward. Durden had a strong first round with a lot of grappling control time and, under the newer set of unified rules, warranted a 10-8 round. The second and third were relatively standard 10-9 rounds for Durden. The result? 28-28 scores across the board.
It is pretty surprising this has never happened before, though. And it gives me a headache trying to figure out why. We don’t need to go into the painstaking details of why Durden’s prolonged grappling control gets a 10-8 when Gutierrez only gets 10-9 scores for damage inflicted in the other rounds. We know this judging criteria is highly flawed and scoring isn’t equal.
It might’ve been a first in UFC history, but it likely won’t be the last. With 10-8 rounds being handed out more frequently of late, fights where one side has that strong round then loses the other two are going to become more commonplace. So, get ready for that.
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