The UFC debut of The Ultimate Fighter season 32 champion Mairon Santos will go down in controversy, as he came out on top against Francis Marshall via a highly disputed split decision during the preliminary card of UFC 313.
Marshall scored a knockdown of Santos during the opening round and had an opportunity to finish the fight with an overwhelming flurry late. However, he elected to ride the round out and secure the 10-9.
Marshall appeared to not let up much control of the fight over the remaining 10 minutes, scoring multiple takedowns and clearly doing the bigger damage.
The judges, however, did not see it that way.
While Derek Clearly scored the bout for Marshall 30-27, Chris Lee and David Lethaby both scored the contest 29-28 for Santos.
Amid a chorus of boos inside Las Vegas' T-Mobile Arena, Santos said during his post-fight interview at UFC 313 that he was worried he wouldn't get his hand raised but he felt he did enough to score the win.
Many fans and pundits, however, highly disagreed.
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Santos scored victories over Edwin Cooper Jr., Guillermo Torres and Kaan Ofli to win the featherweight portion of the most recent TUF season. His sole loss in MMA came against fellow TUF alum Dan Argueta.
Marshall, meanwhile, has now lost three of four, with his sole victory in this span coming against Dennis Buzukja.
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