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UFC president Dana White says the scoring opinions for Jon Jones vs. Dominick Reyes was more varied than one-sided.
UFC 247’s main event fight between Jon Jones and Dominick Reyes drew mixed reactions. But the majority of opinions seem to be leaning towards the challenger winning three rounds to two over the champion, which raised questions on the Texas Athletic Commission’s officiating on Saturday night.
While some went as far as calling it a robbery against Reyes, UFC president Dana White disagrees. From his end, the general perception was more diverse than one-sided.
“The scoring was all over the map,” White said during the post-fight scrum (transcript by MMA Fighting). “Joe Silva—the former matchmaker here—had it a draw. (Yahoo! Sports writer) Kevin Iole hit me up and he had Jones 3-to-2. Going into the last round I had Dominick Reyes 3-to-1 going into the last round. My kids are terrorizing me that ‘the fix is in’ and ‘how can this happen, dad? Reyes won that fight,’ and the list goes on and on of people that are reaching out to me.
“So it’s not like there’s this landslide of people saying there was a robbery or whatever. People have it all over the place.
“But the reality is? Who gives a sh-t? We’re not judges,” he continued. “None of us are judges. The judges call the fight and that’s that. As far as the judging and the reffing tonight, do I think it was perfect? I do not. I think that we need to do some work down here.”
White says he also spoke to some who are in the belief that Reyes should’ve done more. And like how he’d done multiple times in the past, he stressed the point about not leaving it in the hands of the judges.
“I talked to a few guys tonight, they were like, ‘You can’t run the last two rounds and then take the title away from the champion,’” White said. “So you have people that think a lot of different ways on how they score a fight, but we’re not judges, you know?”
“When these guys go out, Dominick Reyes is fighting Jon Jones, and Jon Jones is fighting Dominick Reyes, and they’re both fighting the judges too,” he added. “I don’t know how many more times I can say it. If you think these guys are incapable of judging a fight, then do everything in your power to take it out of their hands.”
Ultimately, White is expecting a better fight in the rematch, should it happen down the line.
“If and when these two fight again, it’ll be even better than tonight,” he said. “So that’s the positive out of what we saw here this evening. No matter what side of the fence you sit on.”
Jones was given a unanimous decision win. One judge scored it 49-46, which drew more controversy.