Former UFC referee John McCarthy is a firm believer that the outcome of the rematch between UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski and the former ruler Max Holloway should be in favor of the challenger, and not the champ.
Just like the first fight between the two, the rematch also sparked a lot of controversies. Volkanovski and Holloway fought for a total of 10 rounds and after the initial five, there were a lot of people (“Blessed himself too) that believed he did enough to defend his belt.
But that wasn’t the case according to the judges who gave the victory to “The Great”.
It was deja-vu all over again for both fighters and the fans who believed that after the second five rounds there had to be a new champion, but no.
“Max Holloway got…I don’t want to say robbed. But, he got jobbed because he definitely won that fight,” said Big John.
“There are certain people that were — this is where I have a problem — the UFC is responsible for the people who are their officials there. This isn’t the British MMA council who is doing the inspector job and things, it’s the UFC. You picked some really bad people to be your judges because they do not have the levels that it takes to be in the position that they are and judge the fight. Because the Volkanovski fight was not that hard of a fight to judge.”
“Max was tooling him in the beginning of that fight. I’ll give Vokanovski coming on in the end, okay. But there’s no way he won three rounds in that fight. Did not happen. Impossible. Sorry, I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at. I wrote the rules you go by for your criteria, and you’re not frickin’ following them. I had it 3-2 [for Holloway, giving him the first three rounds]. You almost could have gone 49-46 for Holloway.”
