There has been a lot of debate over the decision for last night's Light Heavyweight Championship bout; did Lyoto do enough to win? Was Shogun robbed? Head Kick Legend takes a look at this fight from a different perspective, that of a kickboxing fan in what was easily a kickboxing bout as opposed to a MMA battle. Neither man utilized much grappling, with only a few takedown attempts being something you wouldn't see in a kickboxing battle. If scored as a kickboxing bout, how does it turn out?

Rewatching the fight, it is easy to realize that this fight bares little resemblance to a Mixed Martial Arts battle outside of Shogun attempting a few takedowns; this was a kickboxing fight. I think a lot of MMA fans are used to scoring and watching fights in a different fashion, but when you adjust the way you look at the fight, a few things become more clear. When you take out who was "stalking" who and who was clinching who, the fight becomes a lot more simple to score. 

Round one was Lyoto Machida's round. He opens with a thai clinch and a flurry of knees. Shogun throughout most of the round, if not the fight was stalling against the cage. In round one he threw a few knees to the hamstrings of Lyoto, but the damage those did really didn't come into the equation until the late rounds of the fight. Nearly every strike Rua threw completely missed the mark or was blocked. I see a lot of people quoting FightMetric to defend their stance, and all I can say is I'm not sure what fight they were watching and that FightMetric, while the output is somewhat scientific, is still validated and entered by humans, so there is a margin of error.

The full analysis is up at Head Kick Legend.