Saturday, May 19, 2012

Jessica Aguilar squeaks out win over Megumi Fujii

Here's the match video for Jessica Aguilar vs Megumi Fujii from last night's Bellator show. Jessica was awarded a unanimous decision by the judges. I don't think she won the fight but I do think Megumi lost the fight. I didn't think either of them performed very well. The key to this fight was round one. I always thought that fighters should be rewarded for aggression. But it seems that a lot of judges prefer light sparring and reward that instead. And that was Jessica's main strategy for this fight. When fighters are not engaging very well, that's tough for judges to score. And many judges won't won't give a round a tie score even if it is a tie and that will tilt the fight in the wrong direction. In the first round, I thought Megumi was generally more aggressive and she scored a takedown and submission attempt near the end of the round. So I scored it 10-9 for Megumi. Jessica may have landed a few punches but I don't think she was active enough. The second round was light sparring bullshit that irritates the hell out of me. Jessica landed a couple of punches near the end of the round and I guess that was enough for her to win 10-9 though it could have been scored a tie because not much happened. And round two is where Megumi lost the fight. If she had continued her aggression of round one, I'm sure she could have won the round. Because in round three, she did that and won the round easily. Based on the ten point scoring system, I scored it 29-28 for Megumi because I thought she won round one. But the judges scored round one in Jessica's favour so she won 29-28. I split the first two rounds and Megumi clearly won round three. And if I score round two a draw, that makes it 29-27. You're asking the judges for a clear decision when sometimes it's not that clear and they think they have to pick a winner. Of course that's not true. There can be tie rounds and draws. So that kind of thinking by the judges may have resulted in the wrong decision. And I don't think either fighter did enough to win so maybe it should have been a draw. Will Megumi Fujii retire? We'll see. Next week, her student Ayaka Hamasaki defends the JEWELS Lightweight Championship against Yuka Tsuji. If Tsuji wins, maybe we will finally see the long awaited Fujii vs Tsuji showdown at the year end JEWELS show. If Ayaka wins, maybe she will pack it in and let Ayaka carry the AACC flag. Enjoy the video.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:17 PM

    agree with that. Perhaps my image of the judging sytem is wrong buth from what i saw. Jessica was dancing around to avoid gething taken down. And Fujii still took her down. Fujii almost sealed the deal in round 1.
    And was constantley pushing the action. Fujii showed way more control in the clinch and on the ground. While Jessica just threw a bunch of punches while playing defensively.

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