It was a shocking turn of events at the UFC 259 on Saturday night, March 6, as fans watched with awe dropping jaw…. the last style bender Isreal Adesanya was neutralized by the underdog Polish Blachowicz who surprisingly landed more strikes against the feared supposed invinsible striker Israel.
Blachowicz surprised everyone by standing toe-to-toe with the Israel not being intimidated by Israel’s kickboxing prowess, and more shockingly won the first two rounds which was more or less kickboxing rounds.
Then in the 4th and 5th round Blachowicz cashed out his Jiujitsu blackbelt by scoring two successful takedowns and remained on top of Isreal for a considerable amount of time, landing blows.
Size difference made it easy for Blachowicz to dominate the ground work.
Blachowicz on top and lading significant blows.
Izzy despite having some good moments in the fights was overwhelmed by the size of his opponents especially in the takedowns and “ground and pound”.
The three judges ringside scored the fight. Two judges scored it 49-47 and one judge scored it 49-46, all in favor of Jan Blachowicz.
Dana White during the post-fight conference for UFC 259
Dana Frederick White Jr. the UFC President in a post-fight press conference expressed his utter disappointment and spite for the outcome of the fight, here’s what he said….
“The scoring was insane, these guys are giving out 10-8 rounds like f*cking… there were two rounds in that fight that they gave a 10-8. When I came up in the fight business, a 10-8 was an ass-whupping. You got your ass whupped. You didn’t do sh*t in that round and got beat down if it was a 10-8.
“This 10-8 sh*t’s is out of control right now. So hopefully, we can get this fixed. They’re going to screw up a lot of fights, they’re handing out 10-8s like that. There was no 10-8 in that fight.”
A “10 point must system” is used for scoring, the winner of each round gets a score of 10 and the opponent gets 9, that gives a 10-9.
In around where a fighter dominates the fight and almost knocks out the other guy or knocks him down. The dominant fighter gets the score of ten while the guy that takes the beaten gets a score of 8, giving a 10-8 round.
Dana White clearly had plans for Israel, Blachowicz was just a step to make him more popular and feared but the unexpected happened, anger and disappointment is all he feels now.