Maldonado: For the love of God, Fedor did not win
Fabio Maldonado: “For the love of God, he almost fell several times. Everybody knows (the first round) was at least 10-8, or even a 10-7.
Fedor Emelianenko received a majority decision win over Fabio Maldonado at Eurasian Fight Nights 50 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The event was sanctioned by the Russian MMA Union, which appointed the referee and three judges – Evgeny Gribkov, Alexey Gorokhov, and Maria Makhmutova. The Russian MMA Union is only MMA federation certified by the Ministry of Sports in Russia; bad news is, the president of the Russian MMA Union is Fedor, and you can’t regulate yourself.
In the first round, Fedor sustained one of the great beatings in the sport’s history. He then rallied in rounds 2 and 3. Makhmutova scored the first round 10-8 Maldonado and rounds 2 and 3 10-9 Fedor, a draw. That is a reasonable score, and any problem anyone has with the score is a problem with how fights are scored under the unified rules.
The other two refs scored it 29-28 for Fedor, conceding the first round 10-9 to Maldondo with the second two rounds going to Fedor. That is less reasonable.
Maldonado spoke with Guilherme Cruz for MMA Fighting after the fight, and was not impressed.
“I have the utmost respect for Fedor,” began Maldonado. “He’s the most humble fighter I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m happy that I fought here. But I think I won the fight, right? I didn’t lose that third round. In the worst-case scenario, give him the third round and it’s a draw. He didn’t win that fight. Judges saw what nobody else did. He was better in the second round, but that was not a 10-8. And I have no doubt the first round was a 10-8.
“For the love of God, he almost fell several times. Everybody knows (the first round) was at least 10-8, or even a 10-7. He punched me close to the fence, but I was there because I really wanted him to attack.”
“He did stop the fight. The referee touched me, stopped the fight standing to give Fedor his mouthpiece. He stopped the fight when I was attacking. Man… It would be hard to win a decision here, we knew that. But the referee did a good job. People talk about Mario Yamasaki, criticize him, but he always did a great job when I was fighting. He let me get beat up by Glover Teixeira, and stopped it against (Stipe) Miocic. So he did a great job with me. It wasn’t a mistake to not stop this fight, but he did a mistake by stopping it to give Fedor his mouthpiece that time.
“But it wouldn’t be crazy if he wanted to stop it. For less than that, the referee stopped his fight against Dan Henderson. He went back up and down several times yesterday. But even when he was dizzy, it was hard to catch him, he kept dodging my punches. Holy s***, that’s a tough man. His jab tasted like blood. Any slap he threw got me off balance.”
“I thought I could have lost,” he admitted. “I really thought about it.”
“People know what happened. Everybody knows. Many Russians came to me after the fight saying that I won. I live day by day. I can fight at 205, at heavyweight. I just don’t compete in jiu-jitsu and taekwondo. Anything else with punches and good money involved, I’m in. I competed in submission and twice in boxing this year, and won by submission and knockouts. I feel the evolution.
“I’m feeling well. I know I’m evolving. Twenty years ago, people would be asking for me to retire because I’m 36, but taking care of myself, eating well, training intelligently, we last longer. I want to fight until I’m 40 or more, but I can’t keep fighting wars like this one and the Glover fight [laughs].”
Maldonado’s manager Stefano Sartori told MMA Fighting that the camp plans an appeal.
“We’re very happy with Fabio’s performance, he made everything right inside the cage,” he wrote. “One of our main goals was to show the world the fighter he truly is and what he can do when he is 100% focused, and we did that. But we went there focused on winning and we feel like the judges took that away from us. The promoters didn’t agree with the result and most of the fighters who were there also think the result was strange.
“Round 1 was clearly a 10-8 for us, Round 2 Fedor got a close 10-9 and round 3 was very close but we think Maldonado got the better shots. It was a least a draw, and we will appeal to Russian MMA Union to review this result.”
H/T Rabid Bunyip