John McCarthy On UFC 251 Co-Main Event: Max Holloway Definitely Won

After losing his UFC featherweight title to Alex Volkanovski at the end of last year at UFC 245, Max Holloway came up just short of recapturing the title this past weekend at UFC 251, losing via a controversial split decision. Following the co-main event on Fight Island, several big names in the MMA community, including Dana White and Nate Diaz, openly disputed the judges’ decision.

One other name to criticise the judges was ‘Big’ John McCarthy. The former legendary referee and judge, turned broadcaster, even went so far as to suggest that the judge Mark Collett, should be removed from his role on Fight Island.

UFC 251 Alex Volkanovski vs Max Holloway
Image courtesy of Yahoo! Sports

Speaking on his Weighing In podcast (as transcribed by BJ Penn.com) McCarthy explained why he thought Holloway was robbed jobbed.

“Max Holloway got — I don’t want to say robbed — but he got jobbed because he definitely won that fight,” McCarthy said.

“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,” declared McCarthy.

“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 frikkin following them. I had it 3-2 [for Holloway, giving him the first three rounds]. You almost could have gone 49-46 for Holloway.”

Do you agree with John McCarthy? Do you think Max Holloway was robbed at UFC 251?

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