Bautista / Aldo fights shines a light on need for referee reform in MMA

I predicted before this fight even was finalized that it was going to be a boring fight and I was correct, only not for the reasons that I thought I would be. Jose Aldo has been quite a boring fighter after he was kind of changed by his loss the Conor McGregor all those years ago. Since that time he has a mostly unimpressive record riddled with losses and decision victories. You have to go back to February of 2019 to find an Aldo victory that wasn't a decision and unlike most fighters, he has had a LOT of fights since then. He has been searching for a revival of sorts and all of these paths seems to lead to failure.

His fight at UFC 307 was meant to be another chance at a comeback for the Brazilian, but that is not what happened at all. The fight was once again, boring, but for once it wasn't Aldo's fault at all. That lies squarely on the shoulders of the man he faced, Mario Bautista.

src

Aldo was getting some good strikes in and it became evident to the crown, those watching at home, and perhaps Bautista himself that Jose Aldo was the better striker and stand-up fighter. This is likely what prompted Mario Bautista to switch to an almost completely wrestling / takedown attempt offense that had the crowd booing over and over again. At first in the earlier parts of the fight, it looked as though Mario was genuinely looking to complete these takedowns but Aldo had stellar defense against them and this resulted in none of the ten that he attempted. Early on Mario was actively working to take him down but later on this just appeared to be a tactic of tying up Aldo and leaning on him so that he couldn't move. It's easy enough for the armchair QB's out there to suggest that Aldo wasn't trying to get away hard enough, but what are you going to do when the guy who weighs basically exactly the same as you, has you wrapped up and leaning against the fence, over and over and over again.

src

What you see above, is essentially what the entire wrestling game was like and this took up a lot of time as far as the overall fight was concerned. It was clear that Mario wasn't seeing much success with these takedowns and for those of us watching, it started to seem as though he was just wasting time and trying to not fight anymore because it appeared as though in the "open" that Aldo had a rather large advantage. I don't know if Mario's corner thought he was ahead on points or what, but especially in the 3rd round, Mario didn't appear to be trying to fight at all. He was just grabbing on to Jose and holding him in place, not really trying to execute a takedown anymore because the earlier rounds had already proven that this wasn't going to happen.

Referee Mike Beltran is coming under fire for not breaking them up when this happened over and over again and I think this criticism is well-deserved and something that the UFC needs to put under the microscope in future matches. Any fight can be made extremely boring when one guy isn't trying to fight, he is just attempting to appear as though he is controlling the pace of the fight when in reality the only thing he or she is doing is intentionally wasting time to get the fight over with.

At the end of it all the crowd was booing and this continued in a near deafening sense when the winner of the fight was announced.

src

I have to admit that I chuckled a little bit when Jose was standing there awaiting the judges' decision wearing and stupid crown (what does he think he is the king of exactly?) only to have the decision victory given to Mario Bautista instead. Bautista did not deserve that victory and the crowd made their displeasure known by nearly drowning out the microphone with their noise. This will go down a victory in Mario's record, but he really pissed off the fans as well as big boss Dana White with his tactics. Dana White didn't call out any fight in particular but when asked about the night in a post-fight press-conference Dana said "I thought the judging was atrocious tonight. I’ll just leave it that. It was atrocious.”

src

I don't know how any judge could look at this fight and think that Bautista was the victor but here in the likely reason why they came to that conclusion. "Octagon control" is one of the criteria for determining the winner of a round. Since Bautista was the reason why the fighters were wrapped up and not moving around might have factored into their minds as being in control, but in reality Bautista was unable to convert any of these into actual takedowns and this is sparking a conversation about how "takedown defense" should count more than it does as far as determining who is declared the winner of a round. If the opponent is constantly shooting for takedowns and just hanging onto their opponent but fails time and time to actually do anything with it, why should this count as a good thing for them at all? It isn't a good thing and it shouldn't count.

Also, there are calls for referees to break up stalled fighters more frequently, which Mike Beltran did only once in the entire 15 minutes. This needs to change or some fighters are actually going to start to use this as an actual strategy in order to protect an unbeaten streak. I certainly hope that Dana has a stern talkin' to with all the officials afterwards because this needs to change.

Overall this PPV was one of the most boring main cards that I have seen in a while and 2 of the fights were decided, I think incorrectly by the judges. But I guess this just leads more towards the old statement of "never leave it in the hands of the judges" and Aldo has been leaving it in their hands for many years now. Perhaps it is indeed time for the aging fighter to hang up his gloves.