Veteran MMA referee, turned Bellator commentator “Big” John McCarthy believes that Yoel Romero didn’t have the passion to win the title from Israel Adesanya at UFC 248.
Israel Adesanya put his UFC middleweight title on the line against Yoel Romero in the main event at UFC 248. He was able to successfully defend his belt against the Cuban challenger, earning himself a unanimous decision victory. Many fans felt that the fight did not live up to its expectations in a somewhat lackluster performance, from both fighters. Despite the criticism of the fight, John McCarthy believes that the right man won and Yoel Romero didn’t put it all on the line, in what was his last chance to win a UFC title.
McCarthy discussed the main event at UFC 248 on a recent episode of the “Weighing In” podcast, with Josh Thomson. He scored the fight for Adesanya, but he also thinks that the 1st-round should have been scored a draw due to the lack of action from both fighters. See what the former MMA official had to say below:
“The first round should have been 10-10. And the reason it should have been 10-10—even though I know it’s not going to be because Yoel landed that big shot—is because neither guy deserved to win the round. When you have a problem scoring a fight is when they give you nothing. They gave the judges basically nothing. Yoel landed one shot and you saw Izzy blinking his eye. It was because of probably the corner of the glove or knuckle kind of went in his eye. Did it damage Izzy? No, it didn’t damage him, but he reacted to it, that’s saying it had an effect. And so I knew Yoel was going to get that first round. So he gets the first round,” McCarthy said.
“You look at the other rounds, I would say Yoel probably wins the second, but I can see someone saying Izzy is hitting him with the leg kicks. So we’ll say Yoel (in the second) but Izzy wins the other rounds. And it should have gone to Izzy. And it goes to Izzy because Yoel just didn’t have the passion to try to go out there and win the title. I’m not saying Izzy had a great performance but he did what he’s supposed to do in chopping this guy down. Take a look at Yoel’s leg. Yoel’s going to be doing the stiff walk for a while. That was the true damage that occurred in that fight overall, [due to] the sustained kicking attack of Izzy. It was not a good fight,” McCarthy added.
This article first appeared on CLOSEDGUARDMEDIA.com on 10th March, 2020.
Discussion about this post