Dana White Thought BJ Penn Beat Jon Fitch At UFC 127

By
March 2nd, 2011

Pretty much everyone thought Jon Fitch deserved to get the W or at least thought the draw was appropriate in his UFC 127 main event bout against BJ Penn. Well, everyone except Dana White (and Matt Hughes). Dana didn’t make it to the UFC 127 post-fight press conference because he had to catch his flight, but he did give his thoughts on the fight to ESPN’s Brett Okamoto. He thinks BJ should have won the decision.

“I didn’t think it was a draw,” White told ESPN.com. “I looked at the scorecards and the two judges who had it a draw scored the first two rounds for Penn and the third round a 10-8 [for Fitch].

“Personally, I scored the first two rounds for Penn and had him winning the fight. There’s no doubt B.J. got pounded in the third round, but that wasn’t a 10-8 round.”

Penn’s former nemesis and training partner for the Fitch fight, Matt Hughes, echoed Dana’s sentiments on his blog, and added that round three should have been a 10-9 because Fitch didn’t try to end the fight.

…I really thought BJ had won the first two rounds and, of course, the third round is nothing but Fitch. He gets a takedown early and lays on BJ the rest of the fight. I do think BJ did a good job avoiding strikes and it was a little disappointing seeing Fitch not do anything to try to end the fight. That round to me was a 10-9 round for Fitch.. A lot of people don’t understand the judging criteria, in boxing you can give a 10-8 round pretty easily because there are a lot more rounds. In fighting you just can’t do that. With 3 rounds to judge, a 10-8 has to be a pretty dominant round. With Fitch doing nothing to end the fight, that was not a 10-8 round, in my opinion. I even had one person comment on my forum that it could have been a 10-7 round… ???

Maybe I need to go back and watch the fight again, but when it was live it looked to me like Fitch was at least trying to finish BJ in the third round. He didn’t go balls out like Shane Carwin did when he fought Brock Lesnar but he was consistently hitting him with shot after shot after shot. I don’t know what constitutes a dominant round in their eyes, but Fitch outstruck BJ 134-0 in round three, according to CompuStrike. If that’s not a dominant round, I don’t know what is.

For the record, Dana White doesn’t hate Jon Fitch as some of the rumors going around suggested.

Image via Daniel Herbertson for MMA Fighting

Read more about: BJ Penn,Dana White,Jon Fitch,Matt Hughes,UFC 127

Related Posts

No related posts.

We have a new commenting system and comment policy. Read about them here and here.

  • Warriordave927

    i dont know if i should be commenting since i didnt watch the fight but i think that dana wants to believe that bj won the fight because it would be easier to promote bj fighting for the title(if gsp moves up in weight) than have to promote john fitch vs who ever the #1 contender would be or bj vs fitch 2

  • jakob

    It doesn’t make a difference seeing how things shud have gone they happened already, they’re in the books so its time to get the show rollin. The fight was intended to see the winner as the no1 contender. No winner, no no1 contender in my opinion, after rush defeats shields who is his only standing challenger, which he will, and thus moves up to middleweight (which he shudnt) the ufc needs to throw it down with an insane ww tournament to find the new title holder because otherwise there isn’t any ONE outstanding candidate for the position

    • jakob

      @jakob by the way steve great work great site im addicted to it, i have it as my home page on my phones browser and check it as much as possible keep up all the good work

    • SteveBarry

      @jakob Thanks man, appreciate the support. How do you like the mobile site by the way? Everything work good for you?

    • jakob

      @SteveBarry. Yea it all works great. Some of the videos don’t show up on the screen leaving a empty white space where it wud be but I’m sure its only due to my phone’s capability. Also a lot of admiration and respect for not tolerating all those dumb insult filled comments. the fighters aren’t the only ones representing mma

    • SteveBarry

      @jakob Glad to hear it works well. Yeah, nothing I can do about the video’s. That’s a phone issue. I try to post only videos the phone support, but sometimes I don’t have a choice. I actually expected some backlash over it but everyone’s good so far.

      And thanks for joining the discussion!

  • moolian

    Bj definately won that fight a 10-8 round is a dominant round where you come close to finishing your oponent and since fitch never even came close to doing that i think he deserved a 10-9 round

  • GET RID OF FITCH (forever)

    I just wish the UFC would do the right thing and finally cut Fitch.  How is it even possible to pay a guy to fight for you that has absolutely no fanbase.  Fitch simply just stinks up any fight card he is on.

«
»