Joe Rogan thinks that Umar Nurmaomedov probably should have won his UFC 311 clash against Merab Dvalishvili. The Caucauses cousins had an epic battle for the Georgian’s bantamweight title last month, which ‘The Machine’ won via unanimous decision.

The first two rounds belonged to Nurmagomedov, whose sharp striking was too good for ‘The Machine’. What makes ‘Young Eagle’s initial dominance even more impressive is that he broke his hand in the very first round. The last two rounds, in sharp contrast, were the Merab Dvalisvili show. This leaves the third round as the decider and that is where Rogan feels the judges may have made a mistake.

“He [Umar] won the first two rounds and the question is the third round. And so I watched it a couple times, and me and John Anik and Daniel Cormier have been going back and forth with texts about this. I was like man, that third round is so close. It’s so close I could see judges giving it to Umar,” Rogan said.

“He landed more strikes on the feet he did get one takedown. Merab got a couple takedowns but he didn’t do much with the takedown. But Daniel had a really good point that at the end of it, Merab was accelerating and it looked like Umar was starting to get tired,” he added.

In fact, if one looks at the stats, a very good case could be made that Nurmagomedov should have won that round, and thus the fight. Two of the judges scored the fight 48-47 in Dvalishvli’s favor, while one had it 49-46 for the champ. And if the Dagestani had managed to win the third round on two of the judges’ scorecards, he would have walked away with a split-decision victory. But the stats only tell half the story.

What stats tell us about Umar Nurmagomedov’s third round against ‘The Machine’?

Umar Nurmagomedov, who had his cousin, Khabib in his corner, landed twenty-two significant strikes in the third, one more than Davlishvili’s twenty-one. More importantly, however, Khabib caught the champ seventeen times to the head, while Dvalishvili only hit him fourteen times on the noggin. In addition, ‘Young Eagle’ had significantly more control time on the ground in the third- forty-three seconds, compared to Dvalishvili’s seven seconds.

However, as Rogan points out, the momentum was clearly on Dvalishvili’s side, as he looked as fresh as in the first round, while Umar started to tire. While the stats may well make it seem like Umar should have won the fight, the eye test tells us differently. So different a story, in fact, that all twenty-one of the media members’ scorecards recorded on ‘mmadecisions.com’ gave the fight to Dvalishvili 48-47!

Clearly, all three scored the third round in favor of ‘The Machine’ since it was clear to whom the first and last two rounds belonged. Were all the media members and all the judges wrong? Maybe. But then again fights are not really scored based upon the stats, but who looked better. And on that criteria, the champ was the clear winner of the third round. What do you think about Joe Rogan’s take on the third round of the Merab Dvalishvili vs. Umar Nurmagomedov fight?