Abubakar Vagaev Did NOT Beat Saygid Izagakhmaev [4nwAud7tSNq]
Abubakar Vagaev officially defeated Saygid Izagakhmaev by unanimous decision at UFC Abu Dhabi—but after reviewing the fight and scoring criteria, I believe the judges rewarded control time over actual damage. In this breakdown, I review the meaningful strikes from Round 1 frame by frame. Several of Vagaev’s supposed elbows either missed entirely or landed on Saygid’s shoulder and upper back. Meanwhile, Saygid landed a clean knee to the head, multiple hard knees to the body, damaging leg kicks and a flush right hand that visibly snapped Vagaev’s head back. Round 3 makes the decision even harder to defend. Saygid appeared to land the more damaging offense while also being credited with three submission attempts. That means he arguably won both sides of the primary scoring criteria: effective striking and effective grappling. Vagaev clearly won Round 2, but I scored Rounds 1 and 3 for Saygid Izagakhmaev, giving Saygid the fight 29–28. Control time alone should not outweigh damaging strikes. Takedowns and positional control only become effective grappling when they create meaningful offense, damaging ground-and-pound, fight-ending positions or legitimate submission threats. Did the judges get this one wrong? Rewatch the fight and let me know how you scored Saygid Izagakhmaev vs Abubakar Vagaev. Subscribe to Fite Feed for UFC breakdowns, fight analysis, scoring controversies and honest MMA commentary. #UFCAbuDhabi #SaygidIzagakhmaev #AbubakarVagaev #UFCJudging #MMAScoring #UFC #MMA #FiteFeed