In MMA, there are split decisions and then there are split decisions.
The former often come on nights when the judges are aloof, uninterested, uneducated or all of the above and they can’t get on the same page as to which athlete was better after three to five rounds of action in the cage.
The latter happen when two men enter and one man’s gotta leave, so the cageside judges nitpick the action as best they can and deem someone the victor.
At UFC Fight Night 72, Thales Leites was the victim of the latter.
In a spirited, if calculated, affair, the Brazilian attempted to hack down mobile veteran Michael Bisping and his notorious combination of cardio and point striking. He couldn’t do it, at least according to the judges, but he has to be leaving Scotland pretty pleased with how close he came.
Knowing that he’d never win a battle of combinations with the Count and knowing that it was unlikely he’d take the remarkably slippery Bisping down to implement his own formidable ground game, Leites elected to stand upright and try to time his opponent with power shots during exchanges.
It worked, too.
He flattened Bisping a number of times with big uppercuts and overhand rights, but he’d eat a series of peppering shots in doing so and be left shaking his head and resetting at the center of the Octagon. Bisping was the wobblier and lumpier of the two by the time 25 minutes was up, but his sheer volume of punches and kicks landed won him the fight.
It’s the epitome of a constructive loss for Leites, though.
This is a 33-year-old man best known for butt scooting toward the most dangerous man MMA has ever known during a world title fight back in the day. He was unceremoniously hoofed from the UFC not long after that fiasco and spent years rebuilding himself on the regional scene before getting another chance.
The notion that he could stand with one of the better striking middleweights on roster and arguably get the better of many exchanges is, to those who remember his earlier run as a one-dimensional jiu-jitsu ace, nothing short of incredible.
The only thing standing in the way of Leites at this point is the time he has left in the game. It’s hard to get better in your mid-30s, and even in the face of the striking gains he’s made, it may be hard to get as good as needed to contend before retirement comes calling.
Still, if he believes he can do it and puts the time in, this fight is one to build on. After putting up five straight UFC wins entering the Bisping bout and doing it against some respectable opposition, plus knowing that this loss was as close as it could possibly be, confidence should still be at an all-time high for the Nova Uniao product.
It’s weird to consider for a man on the back end of his prime, when every loss should sting worse and every win is born of an urgency not felt by a younger competitor, but losing a fight for relevance and contendership was very much constructive for Thales Leites.
What he does with it will define his next steps.
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