UFC 204 scorecards: Two judges had Bisping vs. Henderson even prior to round 5

How close was Dan Henderson to becoming UFC middleweight champion on the scorecards? Pretty damn close, if you ask me (which you didn’t, but let’s roleplay a bit). Michael Bisping took the unanimous decision despite suffering massive knockdowns in rounds 1 and 2, but the judges effectively decided the fight through their scoring of the 5th round.

Damon Martin tweeted out the official scorecards from last night’s UFC 204 main event, and as you can see, it was all tied up on two cards heading into round 5.

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All three judges (Andreas Gruner, Jeff Mullen, and Andy Roberts) had round 5 for Bisping, which turned out to be the difference maker. Another key round to note was round 2, which saw Bisping pretty clearly outstrike Henderson, but that right hand knockdown in the final minute swayed Gruner and Mullen to score for Hendo, while Roberts scored for Bisping, hence the 49-46 outcome.

No judges had round 1 as a 10-8 for Henderson, even though he was far closer to finishing Bisping on that knockdown than he was with the 2nd knockdown. In fairness, the striking was fairly even up until that point, so everything else is based on interpretation of awarding a 10-8 because there was a near-finish, not that it was necessarily a wall-to-wall dominant round for Dan.