Rounds In Mma

 

As mentioned, MMA fights can only either last 3 or 5 rounds. 5-round fights are reserved for championship fights and main event fights. A typical UFC with no special circumstances surrounding it will always be three rounds. Championship fights are self-explanatory. If there’s a belt on the line, then the fight goes five rounds. A 10 – 10 round in MMA is a necessity to have for the judge’s possible score, mainly due to scoring incomplete rounds. It is possible to have a round where both fighters engage for 5 minutes and at the end of the 5-minute time period the output, impact, effectiveness and overall competition between the two fighters is exactly the same.

Curtis Blaydes made no apologies about his strategy coming into a huge heavyweight fight with Derrick Lewis. Blaydes was going to use his dominant wrestling early and often. He told anyone who would listen.

Maybe it was a decoy. But Blaydes should have stuck to his original game plan, as Lewis crushed him with an uppercut knockout at 1:26 of the second round in Saturday's main event of UFC Fight Night in Las Vegas.

Blaydes gained confidence on the feet in the first round and attempted only one takedown, which Lewis stuffed. And Lewis, one of the most dangerous KO artists in the history of MMA, made him pay.

It was the biggest upset in a UFC main event since Michael Bisping beat Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 in 2016, according to ESPN Stats & Information research. Lewis was a +350 underdog, per Caesars Sportsbook by William Hill, ESPN's odds provider. Bisping was +400 against Rockhold five years ago.

With the stoppage, Lewis ties Vitor Belfort with the most knockouts in UFC history (12). Lewis also is now tied for the second-most wins in UFC heavyweight history (16) with Frank Mir. Andrei Arlovski is the all-time UFC heavyweight wins leader, with 19.

Saturday's finish came when Blaydes ducked in, trying to close the distance for a clinch or a takedown. Lewis saw it coming and let loose with a massive uppercut. Blaydes' body shook on impact, and he was unconscious as he fell to the canvas. Lewis followed up on the ground with punches, until referee Herb Dean came in to pull him off.

'That was the only punch I was waiting for the entire fight,' Lewis said. 'I knew he was gonna come in. ... That's all I was waiting for. I wasn't worried about throwing a one-two, a jab or anything.'

Blaydes was very effective in the first round on the feet, landing hard combinations and chewing up Lewis' lead legs with kicks. He ended up outlanding Lewis 28-7 in significant strikes. Lewis did land a hard right hand early that wobbled Blaydes briefly, but otherwise, Blaydes was in control.

That's how the second round started, as well, but Lewis is always a threat to put an opponent to sleep. And Blaydes got caught with a bomb of an uppercut.

Blaydes didn't land a single takedown in the fight. He had 59 career takedowns landed in the UFC, the most in UFC heavyweight history.

'At the end of the first round, I was like, 'He's messing up, he's messing up,' Lewis said of Blaydes not landing a takedown. 'That's what I was saying in my head ... I was like, 'All right, keep playing that game.' That's what I was saying to myself.'

The bout was originally scheduled for Nov. 28, but Blaydes tested positive for COVID-19, and the contest was pulled one day prior to the event before official weigh-ins.

Coming in, ESPN had Blaydes ranked No. 3 and Lewis ranked No. 5 in the world at heavyweight.

Francis Ngannou is getting the next title shot at champion Stipe Miocic at UFC 260 on March 27, and pound-for-pound great Jon Jones seems waiting in the wings for the winner. Lewis is now in the pole position in case something happens with any of those athletes, but he said it would be silly to say he wants a title shot next given Ngannou and Jones are ahead of him.

Lewis instead said he wants to fight Alistair Overeem next despite Overeem coming off a knockout loss to Alexander Volkov.

'It'll be cool to fight him, because he's a so-called legend,' Lewis said. 'It would be cool to fight somebody like that. ... We've been trying to fight him for years, and he turned down the fight four times already.'

UFC Fight Night took place at the UFC Apex, the promotion's venue across the street from its corporate campus in Las Vegas.

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Lewis (25-7, 1 NC) has won four straight. He was coming off a KO win over Aleksei Oleinik in August. The Houston resident already owned the most knockouts in UFC heavyweight history before Saturday. Lewis, a 36-year-old fan favorite, has won seven of nine and 13 of 16 overall.

Blaydes (14-3, 1 NC) had won four straight coming in and most recently beat Alexander Volkov by unanimous decision win in June. The Illinois native, who trains out of Colorado's Elevation Fight Team, had lost to only one man in the UFC before Saturday: Ngannou, twice.

Blaydes, 30, is a former National Junior College Athletic Association champion in wrestling, and he usually touts his takedown-and-ground, control-based style in MMA.

LAS VEGAS -- It's pretty amazing that the entire Tyron Woodley-Stephen Thompson rivalry was essentially decided in the final moments of their second fight.

All those hours of preparation, promoting both fights -- flights, hotels, side-by-side interviews -- two weight cuts, 50 minutes of competition inside the Octagon: It all came down to a single Woodley flurry at UFC 209.

As it should have.

Look, Saturday's UFC welterweight title fight rematch was an absolute dud in terms of entertainment value. Thus, it's tempting to simply bury it in the ground and forget about it.

How Many Rounds In Mma Fight

Who won the first round? How about the second? Oh, oh, I know! Who cares, right? The fight stunk. Let's move on.

Except that fight brought up an extremely rare topic in mixed martial arts. And I think we need to have a conversation about this now so that the next time it comes up, we can be in agreement ahead of time.

It basically comes down to this: Does a 10-10 round exist in MMA?

Technically, it does -- for a very distinct purpose. If a fight is waved off due to something like an accidental head butt, and judges need to score a round that only lasted 10 seconds, they need a 10-10 option, yes? Of course.

OK, but how about a full, five-minute round in which neither fighter establishes an advantage of any kind over the other -- like the first round of the Woodley-Thompson fight? Do we get to use the 10-10 score then?

The reason this is so worth discussing now is that if that opening round of Saturday's title fight is not a 10-10, then there is no such thing as a 10-10 score. And for the record, none of the three judges scored that round 10-10.

Nothing happened in the first five minutes of that fight. According to Fightmetric, each welterweight landed five total strikes, which might be generous. Nothing significant landed, and there was no grappling whatsoever.

And yet, all three veteran judges scored the first round 10-9 for Thompson. Why did they do it? The most reasonable explanation, one that many observers mentioned aloud, is that Thompson established 'Octagon control.'

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Did he? The main reasoning behind this seems to be that Thompson took the center of the cage, and Woodley spent most of the round with his back near the fence. That much is true, but does it represent 'control' for Thompson?

Ufc Rounds Time

If anyone believes that's where Thompson wanted the fight to take place -- and/or where Woodley did not -- what are you basing that on? Past fights? Perceived skill sets? Nothing else really supports it. In fact, statistically, Woodley was slightly more efficient that round, landing 41 percent of strikes compared to Thompson's 31 percent.

Women's Mma Championship Fight

Rounds In Mma

Mma Rounds Time

After the championship bout was over, Woodley addressed fighting with his back to the fence. And based on his comments, it does not sound as if he views it as a position of disadvantage.

'Sometimes, when you're fighting a point fighter, you expect him to run around and stick and move,' Woodley said. 'I might need that entire 30-foot Octagon to go from my back against the cage all the way across with a blitz to get the opening I need.'

Round In Math

Again, this isn't the most exhilarating topic, so let's wrap things up with this: Athletic commissions basically tell us that 10-10 rounds exist, but they shouldn't be used -- that over the course of a five-minute round, a top-notch judge should be able to decipher which athlete held even the slightest advantage.

I am willing to argue that a top-notch judge should have the courage and ability to say, 'Hey, that was an anomaly 10-10. And I'm not going to put one of these elite welterweights at a massive disadvantage based solely on where they happened to be standing during a round in which nothing happened.'

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Because the difference between 10-10 and 10-9 in a razor-thin, chess match, five-round fight is enormous.

Max Rounds In Mma

Do 10-10 rounds exist? Barely. Five years may go by before we see another one. But if what we saw on Saturday doesn't qualify as one, what in the world does?