Some fans felt like the UFC commentators weren’t giving one half of the main event the props he deserved.
At UFC 314 in Miami, the night ended with Alexander Volkanovski defeating Diego Lopes to reclaim the featherweight title.
Volkanovski made some big changes ahead of April 12 with many questioning whether he could still compete against the best fighters in the world following back-to-back knockout losses.
‘The Great’ answered those claims and them some by rolling back the years before quickly turning his attention to his next challenge with Volkanovski hoping to be an active champion once again.
Though the two-time champion was incredibly deserving of praise, his opponent also showed some new sides to his game even if it didn’t result in him leaving the Kaseya Center with the 145-pound gold.
Daniel Cormier says the main event of UFC 314 was easy to score in response to bias claims
Diego Lopes was beaten in fairly convincing fashion at UFC 314 but the fan favorite was able to answer some questions after going five rounds inside the Octagon for the first time.
For better or worse, the Brazilian was more reserved than he has been in the past and even after he dropped his opponent in the second round, the dangerous striker didn’t lose his composure.
Lopes started to let it all go in the closing minutes of the fight but by that point, many felt like Alexander Volkanovski had already secured the win if he could see the final round out.
This opinion was held by UFC commentator Daniel Cormier who was full of praise for ‘The Great’ after he defied the statistics that were going against him.
One fan on social media tagged Cormier in a post as the card was coming to an end, criticizing the former two-weight UFC champion for not giving Lopes the props that he deserved on commentary.
‘DC’ responded by hitting back at any claim that he was biased towards Volkanovski, stating that he wasn’t swayed by any kind of visual.
“It was 4-1 brother no matter how much you like your guy and it was called that way. I know how to judge fights so I know not to watch and get impressed by big movements.”
Cormier addressed this again in his instant reaction to the fights on his YouTube channel where he once again claimed that he wasn’t being biased to one fighter over the other, he simply felt like the result was clear to see before the scorecards were made official.
“I thought that he fought a vintage fight and there was some, ‘Oh you’re being favoritism to Volk’. I thought it was a pretty easy fight to score. I thought it was four to one Volkanovski. I thought that Lopez won round four in that fight, outside of that I thought Alexander Volkanovski was pretty dominant in the fight.”
Two judges had different scorecards to Daniel Cormier in the main event of UFC 314
Whilst Daniel Cormier stated that in his opinion, Diego Lopes only won the fourth round, two of the judges didn’t agree with him.
Alexander Volkanovski still won the fight via a unanimous decision but all three cards were different with Chris Lee having the same view as Cormier.
Sal D’Amato on the other hand had Lopes winning only the second round whilst Derek Cleary had the fight much closer with the Brazilian winning both the second and the fourth for a score of 48-47 in favor of Volkanovski.
Regardless of the scorecards, which were a talking point throughout the night, the right man got his hand raised and Lopes gave a good account of himself in defeat.
