Oh man. No one likes it when a fight ends with a referee mistake. But how about when it’s a pretty highly-anticipated main event with a lot of buildup? In the UFC Oklahoma City headliner, Kevin Lee got off to an excellent start and had opponent Michael Chiesa in big trouble near the end of the first round. In fact, he had him in a deep rear naked choke. Just like that, the fight was over.

But Chiesa didn’t tap.

It didn’t look like he was going to tap either. Mario Yamasaki just called the fight based off of…something. Chiesa jumped up immediately and (rightly) protested the stoppage, but once again, Yamasaki screwed up. There’s no other way to put it.

After the fight, Lee was pretty cocky but did offer him a rematch. Chiesa accepted a proposed December bout with him, and with the division kind of stalled right now anyway, I hope that’s the way it goes. That was really, really lame though. It was the cherry on a strange card.

• I’m just going to lead off with this before I get to the rest of the fights, because it’s the thing I want to talk about the most. While none of the judge’s scorecards led to the wrong person winning tonight (luckily), at least six different cards were utterly unfathomable based on the action in said fight. One judge gave Justine Kish a round in a fight she was never in. Same with Erik Koch. Those two fighters lost obvious 30-26’s or 30-25’s. Two judges gave Maryna Moroz a round in a similar, but not as dominant, case. One judge somehow scored B.J. Penn and Dennis Siver a draw in a fight where there’s no reasonable explanation for it. And Darrell Horcher won a split decision in what was a totally obvious unanimous decision.
• What does this all mean? I don’t know. But I’ve never seen such consistently awful, unbelievable scoring in one event before. It’s not like it was one judge either – it was apparently a wide variety of morons. Again, luckily it didn’t have any effect on who actually won. But that kind of stuff makes me furious. What the hell were these people watching? Were they watching at all?
• How can you not like Tim Boetsch? The guy just goes in there and beats people up. Who cares if it’s a faded former world champ that can’t make weight in any division he fights in. Whenever you can watch a man drop a dude with a head kick and then uppercut his face into oblivion, you do your best to pay attention. The Barbarian is always worth watching.
• Felice Herrig has dramatically improved since TUF 20. Once known for her striking, her grappling has come along to the point where it might be the stronger part of her game. Justine Kish was short on technique and long on heart, but Herrig completely dominated her over three rounds. Good on her.
• Also, Kish apparently pooped herself in the cage. Crappy night for her all around.
• We have another excellent fighter named Dominick in the UFC, apparently. Wow, did Dominick Reyes ever destroy Joachim Christensen. If you missed this card (good work on that), this is the one thing you should go out of your way to see.
• Tim Means used solid strategy to take a wide decision over Alex Garcia. He avoided the power punches of Garcia and stayed on his feet, using body shots to slow a guy known for questionable cardio. Nothing really exciting happened in the fight, but a win is a win.
• If you’re a B.J. Penn fan like me, you got one glimmer of hope from a shot fighter, and that was it. Other than a Penn uppercut that dropped Siver in the second, BJ was eaten up by Siver strikes for the rest of the fight. And especially in the third round, when it looked like Penn was just trying to survive to the horn. Sad doesn’t even describe it anymore. It’s starting to get a bit disturbing.
• With that being said, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see Penn fight one more time – against Takanori Gomi. Yes, seriously.
• Clay Guida looooves facing Roufusport fighters apparently. Whenever there’s a flashy striker from Milwaukee in front of him, he plants them on their ass and grinds them out. When he beat Anthony Pettis, it was solid. He completely dominated Erik Koch here. I doubt we’re seeing a Guida renaissance, but it was a great performance.
• Oh, and he only burped once in between rounds. I had set the over-under at 1.5, so I hope you bet the under.
• Marvin Vettori and Vitor Miranda went through the motions in a fairly entertaining but not outstanding middleweight fight. Vettori is only 23, and he looks like he has a bright future in front of him.
• Carla Esparza’s grappling was waaay too much for Maryna Moroz. It certainly wasn’t exciting, but it got the job done.
• Darrell Horcher nearly died in a motor cycle accident a little over a year ago. Today, he handled Devin Powell quite easily. That’s a testament to the guy’s toughness, and it’s pretty awesome to see.
• The Fight Pass prelims actually featured some of the better action of the night. Jared Gordon looked excellent in his dismantling and eventual TKO win over Michel Quinones. Tony Martin and Johnny Case went into their fight with some animosity but settled it all in the cage, and Martin came out on top in an entertaining decision. And in the opening bout of the night, Jeremy Kimball grizzly-smashed Josh Stansbury out in 81 seconds.