In the co-main event of UFC 307, Raquel Pennington narrowly lost the bantamweight title to Julianna Peña via split decision. A lot of people had “Rocky” winning the fight at the end of the fifth round, including the media scores and the commentators.
Not to mention the fact that Pennington said the UFC had already gathered her family so they could join her in the Octagon after assuming she had won the fight before the cards were read out by Bruce Buffer.
In the end, it was the opening round that proved to be the difference in the split verdict as Sal D’Amato and Mike Bell scored it in Peña’s favor. This is something that Pennington has had a hard time coming to terms with in the aftermath of the fight.
She told MMA Junkie in a recent interview that she was incredibly confident that she had done enough to win the fight when the final bell went. After attempting to analyze where she lost the opening round, Pennington was left with more questions than answers.
In her opinion, though Peña out landed her in the first stanza, her shots did far more damage which is outlined as the primary scoring criteria. Pennington told MMA Junkie that in this case, the criteria needs to be clearer and stuck to after feeling like she won the round in terms of damage.
I’m still really frustrated with it because for me, it’s like what are you guys really looking for, you know? And they say damaging strikes but you just said everything right there so it’s like okay, some of the scorecards said she out struck me by four strikes but what were her four strikes doing? She was shadow boxing a little bit more, she wasn’t landing actual punches so that’s where it becomes really frustrating because I feel like the lines are not clear and it just robs so many athletes of opportunities… We need to be able to distinguish exactly what’s being looked for and I mean that needs to be honoured.
