Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Shogun Rua squared off in one of MMA's most technical kickboxing battles.

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Sure, our main goal here is to discuss kickboxing and dash in a little Japanese MMA, but when something big happens, it is hard to ignore. Last night's UFC 104 main event made some waves and upset a lot of fans and insiders alike. The consensus is that Lyoto Machida did not successfully defend his title against Mauricio Shogun Rua. Instead, it was believed to be bad judging. 

Rewatching the fight, it is easy to realize that this fight bares little resemblance to a Mixed Martial Arts battle outside of Shogun attempting a few takedowns; this was a kickboxing fight. I think a lot of MMA fans are used to scoring and watching fights in a different fashion, but when you adjust the way you look at the fight, a few things become more clear. When you take out who was "stalking" who and who was clinching who, the fight becomes a lot more simple to score. 

Round one was Lyoto Machida's round. He opens with a thai clinch and a flurry of knees. Shogun throughout most of the round, if not the fight was stalling against the cage. In round one he threw a few knees to the hamstrings of Lyoto, but the damage those did really didn't come into the equation until the late rounds of the fight. Nearly every strike Rua threw completely missed the mark or was blocked. I see a lot of people quoting FightMetric to defend their stance, and all I can say is I'm not sure what fight they were watching and that FightMetric, while the output is somewhat scientific, is still validated and entered by humans, so there is a margin of error.

No doubt in these early rounds Shogun was pushing forward, but his strikes simply weren't landing other than when he clinched against the cage. Machida would wait, counterattack and score points. The cleanest shot in the second round was Machida's kick to the midsection about halfway through if you watch it carefully. Shogun once again scored all of his shots clinching against the cage with some close range knee strikes. Even Shogun's flying kick was partially blocked and countered by a right hand by Machida, that puts Lyoto up two rounds. Machida starts the third round off by scoring points again, nullifying Shogun's strikes. The only clean strikes are a few that Machida slips in. Round three was more of the same, with Shogun scoring a bit more, but Machida having a flurry near the end with Shogun scoring twice, Machida quite a few more times.

This leaves the fight 3 - 0 for Machida. Going into Round four, Lyoto is tired and the clinch knees to the legs have slowed him down considerably. Rounds four and five play out the same way, but with Lyoto being tired from the leg strikes and Shogun scoring the points. This leaves the final score at 3 - 2. If this were a fight in K-1, I could easily see the judges sending this into an Extension round.

While I understand this was a MMA fight, and clinching is a legitimate method of fighting, as a kickboxing match this fight is easily Lyoto Machida's. As a MMA fight I'm inclined to see it the same way, although you could score the first round as a draw round and the fight in general as a draw. I see no real controversy, just differences in opinions.