Israel Adesanya disputes 10-8 round, but says Jan Blachowicz better fighter at UFC 259

LAS VEGAS – Israel Adesanya doesn’t think his loss to Jan Blachowicz was as lopsided as the scorecards made it out to be.

Middleweight champion Adesanya (20-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) failed to capture a second belt when he was defeated by light heavyweight champ Blachowicz in the UFC 259 main event this past Saturday. All three judges gave Blachowicz four rounds, and two gave him a 10-8 score in Round 5.

Although Adesanya agrees Blachowicz (28-8 MMA, 11-5 UFC) did enough to beat him, he’s not sure about the 10-8s in Round 5. He was taken down and controlled on the canvas, but didn’t seem to absorb any serious damage.

“It wasn’t that big of a difference. I don’t know about those 10-8 rounds, and I don’t know about some of those scorecards from the judges,” Adesanya told reporters, including MMA Junkie, at the post-fight news conference. “But I lost the fight to the better fighter tonight, the craftier fighter tonight. But it wasn’t an ass whooping or anything.

“When he had me on the ground, if he had postured up and then wailed on me and thrown some crazy elbows and some crazy punches and connected crazy, yeah – I can say, ‘Yeah, give it a 10-8. Give it a 10-7, even. Use the whole 10-point must system.’ But it wasn’t under that. He just held on and snuck some shots in to try and keep it busy enough that the referee doesn’t stand it up, and that’s a veteran move because he’s a veteran in this game.”

Because Adesanya didn’t think the scorecards accurately reflected his performance, he likes the idea of open scoring that he thinks would help fighters understand where they stand in the fight.

“I wasn’t scoring it, so I didn’t really know what it was. But I’m telling you, some of those judges, they at least need to train,” Adesanya said. “There needs to be some kind of criteria before you start judging MMA and not just get some guys from boxing, like, ‘Oh, have a look at this MMA fight and judge.’ At least you need to get down with the business.

“(Open scoring) might be a good thing. Maybe even scores during the rounds so you know if you’re behind or not. That’s smart. Let’s do that then. I like the fact that we have instant replays now. I don’t know why that took so long. I think that’s a really smart idea. Get it done so that way if my corner wants to tell me, ‘Yo, we need this round,’ because I saw him getting tired. Trust me – I was fresh. He was getting tired and the size played a factor in the fifth round.”