McGregor: Great Fight, Wrong Winner

Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

On Saturday night at UFC 248, Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk put on a fight of the year contender: five rounds of all out war that left both women bruised and battered. In the end it was Zhang who had her hand raised, with the three judges splitting 48-47 scorecards between the two.

The story of the fight beyond the scoring? After a shaky start getting used to Jedrzejczyk’s range, Zhang started punishing Joanna with power shots that busted the former champion up and forced her on the retreat. But despite the obvious damage and pain she was taking, Jedrzejczyk kept fighting hard and wading into more head on striking exchanges with Zhang.

A switch to southpaw gave her some good results. She countered Zhang’s wrestling attempts with muay thai knees in the clinch. She worked her ass off, but Zhang just kept coming and kept landing, ballooning Jedrzejczyk’s forehead up and flattening her nose.

Looking at the photos of Joanna looking pretty mangled, it’s easy to discount just how close she came to winning that fight. But there are certainly arguments to be made that Jedrzejczyk deserved the nod, and here’s Conor McGregor coming out on Twitter to make some:

”Amazing contest! Wrong decision,” McGregor wrote. “More active. More accurate. More damaging shots landed. What more do you need? Amazing fight! Zhang is absolutely tremendous! But Joanna is champion in my eyes.”

Jedrzejczyk did indeed hold the edge as far as activity on strikes go, landing 186 of 360 significant strikes to Zhang Weili’s 165 of 408. Damage is scored highest in the heirarchy of judging, but did Weili damage Joanna more across all rounds or was it mainly that hematoma on her forehead that swayed most opinions?

Honestly, I’m still in a glow over how intense that fight was and happy to just give both women credit for their amazing performances that prove they’re two of the best martial artists in the world. Which is apparently more than some can do…

McGregor responded to that too.

Just as a point of clarification, Makhachev is indeed one of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s training partners … but he was not one of the people involved in the UFC 229 brawl between Nurmagomedov’s team and McGregor’s (although he was there).