After dropping a controversial split decision loss to Amir Albazi in the main event of UFC Vegas 74 on Saturday, Kai Kara-France said he wasn’t going to dwell on the outcome.
But now that he’s had time to digest what happened and reflect, Kara-France feels he has ample reason to be angry with Sal D’Amato and Chris Lee, the two judges who scored the fight 48-47 in favor of Albazi.
“That cost me $100,000, that loss,” Kara-France said on “the MMA Hour.” “It cost me my ranking, No. 3 in the world. Where winning this fight would have just put me right back in with probably [Brandon] Royval to fight for the No. 1 contender. … It’s a tough one when you look at it like that and you take a step back and you’ve got to think, what are these judges looking at? I wasn’t going to win right from the start if that’s what they’re looking at. So it kind of makes you really question what are the judges even trying to see here.”
Although Albazi had a strong showing against Kara-France, many fellow UFC fighters believed that Kara-France clearly won the fight.
Also let’s fix the rankings for the flyweight division… KKF won that fight btw.
— Brandon (@brandonroyval) June 4, 2023
No way Kai won that lol @ufc bro I’m
— Trev5starjones.eth (@TrevinAJones) June 4, 2023
3-2 Kara France that’s the score #UFCVegas74
— Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) June 4, 2023
The fight metrics also leaned in Kara-France’s favor as well as the 30-year-old New Zealander outpointed Albazi 99 to 43 in significant strikes and he was 2-for-2 on his takedown attempts to Albazi’s 1-for-9.
A win would have likely made Kara-France the No. 1 contender for Brandon Moreno’s flyweight championship. Instead, the loss dropped Kara-France from No. 3 to No. 5 in the UFC’s flyweight rankings, while Albazi moved up from No. 7 to No. 3.
Jon Anik and many others scored last weekends main event for Kai Kara-France even though he lost the decision. What can we do to fix judging problems in MMA?https://t.co/N7ReGZY9vO pic.twitter.com/tJQBPkjC6C
— Anik & Florian Podcast (@AnikFlorianPod) June 6, 2023
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