Dana White went scorched earth on MMA judge Dave Tirelli following a couple of highly questionable scorecards on Saturday night.
Luckily, there were no blatant robberies in The Garden State as the promotion served up its latest pay-per-view event, UFC 302. However, there was some pretty egregious scoring and it all seemed to come from one man. Tirelli first drew the ire of the broadcast team and fight fans watching at home when he scored an early bout between Andre Lima and Mitch Raposo in favor of the latter.
The two other judges, Adrian Castro and Eric Colon, both scored the contest 30-27 in favor of Lima. Fans on the global scoring app Verdict agreed with Castro and Colon considering Lima outstruck Raposo in all three rounds.
Unfortunately, Tirelli was far from done. In the co-main event of the evening, Sean Strickland delivered another dominant performance, putting Paulo Costa on his back foot for pretty much the entirety of their 25-minute affair and outstriking ‘The Eraser’ in four of the five rounds.
Chris Lee and Sal D’Amato favored Strickland on their scorecards, giving him a very reasonable 50-45 and 49-46. Tirelli, on the other hand, inexplicably scored it 49-46 in favor of Costa.
Fans on Verdict gave Strickland every round.
Dana White believes dave tirelli should be kicked ‘back down to the minor leagues’
Asked about the scoring gaffes during the post-fight press conference, Dana White didn’t hold back in his assessment of Dave Tirelli’s judging.
“That wasn’t weird, it was f*cking nuts is what it was,” White said reacting to Tirelli’s scorecard in the Strickland vs. Costa fight. “It’s insane. That guy should never [judge] another big fight again. They should kick him back down to the minor leagues and let him work on his judging. It’s unbelievable.”
“How anybody who isn’t an absolute f*cking lunatic could call that fight a split decision. I don’t even know what to say about that. It’s insane. That guy shouldn’t be judging big fights” (h/t MMA Fighting).
As for the fight itself, White was hoping for something a bit more exciting but commended Strickland’s ability to shut down Costa throughout the fight.
“It’s not the fight I expected,” White said of the matchup. “Every time you see Paulo Costa in a fight, it’s a war. He usually goes to war, but you could tell tonight, he couldn’t get off. Brilliant kicking the leg the way he did. Strickland is tough as hell. He was eating those leg kicks all night. I’m wondering how he’s walking, because I haven’t heard anything but [Costa] did some big damage to that front leg.
“I thought [Strickland] fought a beautiful, perfect fight. He’s a very awkward guy to fight and how he throws those teep kicks and his hands are so good, he’s very elusive and [has] a beautiful jab, and he basically picked Costa apart and shut him down.”