The best and worst from UFC on ESPN: Dos Anjos vs. Edwards

#1 Worst: Home cooking favors Hernandez

Did the right man really win the fight between Alexander Hernandez and Francisco Trinaldo?

Okay, so firstly the fight between Francisco Trinaldo and Alexander Hernandez was quite clearly the worst on show on the main card last night; both men usually tend to put on exciting fights but the style clash between the two seemed to lead them into a fight with more circling and feinting than anything else. Those kind of fights always turn out to be tricky to score – but last night I felt like the wrong man definitely got his hand raised when Hernandez was awarded a unanimous decision.

For me, Trinaldo got the better of the majority of the exchanges in the fight, and he was also the man who held the center of the Octagon while Hernandez was forced to move around the outside, for whatever that’s worth. The stats appeared to back that up, too – the Brazilian landed 28 strikes to Hernandez’s 26, with 13 of them landing to the head compared to 9 for Hernandez.

Of course, it was a close fight – the stats tell you that much – but for two judges to give the fight to Hernandez by scores of 30-27 was baffling to me and suggests that they were likely swayed by a hot crowd in favor of ‘Alexander the Great’. The fight probably won’t derail Trinaldo’s momentum a lot nor will it help Hernandez going forward, but even so, a bad decision is still a bad decision.