Photo: The controversial Sandhagen vs Dillashaw scorecards

Find out how the judges ended up with Dillashaw winning a split decision over Sandhagen.

Cory Sandhagen and T.J. Dillashaw fought for an entertaining 25 minutes to headline Saturday’s UFC card, with both fighters having their moments and looking pretty good in the contest. The former champion took more damage and was bloodied up after eating some big strikes, but he still ended up with a split decision win.

Judge Derek Cleary gave the fight to Sandhagen with a 48-47 score, but Dillashaw won as two of the three judges, Sal D’Amato and Junichiro Kamijo gave him three of the five rounds. Here are the official scorecards:

The judges all had the same scores for the first three rounds, but differed in the last two. Two of the three judges scored the fourth for Sandhagen, while two of the three also gave him the fifth. Unfortunately for him, the totals still had him losing on two cards as all three judges already had Dillashaw winning two of the first three rounds.

Sandhagen landed the cleaner and more damaging strikes throughout the fight, and even hurt Dillashaw on a couple of occasions. He also landed with more volume, with official UFC stats having him out-land Dillashaw 128 to 110 overall.

Sandhagen also had a significant advantage with head strikes, landing 110 shots to the head, compared to just 59 from Dillashaw.

Dillashaw landed some nice leg kicks on the latter rounds though, with official UFC stats crediting him with 41 strikes to Sandhagen’s legs. He went just 2 for 19 in takedowns, but it seems like judges credited him for having that control time on the fence.

For what it’s worth, MMA Decisions compiled various scores, and had 17 media members scoring it for 48-47 Sandhagen, compared to just six that gave it to Dillashaw.

D’Amato was also involved in another controversial split decision earlier in the card, giving Maycee Barber a questionable 29-28 score. 100% of the media members compiled had Miranda Maverick winning instead.