- John McCarthy explained why he may have given the W to Holly Holm, but the judges weren’t really wrong to hand it to Ketlen Vieira
- “Big John” shared his take on the performance of the former women’s bantamweight champion
John McCarthy has regularly weighed in on the most interesting UFC fights on his podcast and based upon his unofficial scorecard for the recent Holly Holm vs. Ketlen Vieira fight, “The Preacher’s Daughter” won. However, he also suggests that the judges could be right as well when they gave the split decision win to Vieira.
Your winner by split decision – @KetlenVieiraUFC! #UFCVegas55 pic.twitter.com/8QuJJOxIX3
— UFC (@ufc) May 22, 2022
There was no robbery
Speaking on a recent episode of his “Weighing In” podcast, McCarthy said that it wasn’t the best performance from Vieira and he gave it to Holm, “3-2.” On the other hand, “Big John” also reckoned that it can’t be called a “robbery” as there are a lot of “elements” to take into consideration in deciding such close fights.
“I don’t know what she’s gonna do,” McCarthy said of Holm. “I know she’s very upset, she believes she won that fight, and I can understand why she believes she won the fight, but I don’t think it was a robbery. I don’t think it was the greatest performance by Ketlen Vieira, either, but you’ve got to look at all these elements and figure out where you’re at, and both have things that they’re gonna have to figure out. ‘I’ve gotta stop this from happening and if I don’t, it’s not gonna be good in my next matchup.’”
“I thought (Holm) won,” he continued. “I gave it to her 3-2. She won the first round. She lost the second and third, I believe. I think I gave her the fourth and the fifth.”
The former champ is not the same fighter anymore
Undeniably, Holm vs. Vieira was a close match with round No. 3 being the hardest to judge. But for McCarthy, the slight decline on Holm’s performance was also evident in the Vieira fight.
According to McCarthy, the former UFC women’s 135-pound queen is still a good fighter but her movement has been “slowing down” a bit, allowing “Fenomeno” to capitalize on the other hand.
“[Holm] She still has the same output as far as all that movement, and she moves a lot, and she’s got a lot of lateral movement,” McCarthy assessed. “The one thing I saw that’s a difference is when she came in with her rushes and there was no snap in her shots. It was more of the push and then her head was still centerline, and that’s why Ketlen was able to counter her the way she did and hit her with those right hands that she kept getting blasted by, and her head was right on the centerline. She never changed it, and it’s a difference in her fighting style.”
“She’s been phenomenal, but you can see that she is slowing down little bits, and those little bits make big differences because you got that center line, and there’s little movements left and right that allow something to glance and slide by, and you’ll see it, and you’ll do that movement, and that movement is just a fraction of a second slower than it was before and instead of it glancing and sliding by, it’s popping you, and that’s what’s happening now,” he explained.
Aside from McCarthy, former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping also thinks there was no robbery that took place at UFC Vegas 55. Holm, meanwhile, was “upset” with how the judges saw Vieira getting the better of her.
