Despite winning his UFC 308 bout against Carlos Leal, Rinat Fakhredinov came up short in the court of public opinion. The win which was supposed to go to his Brazilian opponent, received stark criticism from the MMA community and the commentary team. Reacting to the criticism, Fakhredinov͏ called out the commentary team for down͏playing hi͏s victor͏y͏. This prompted a scathing reply from Daniel Cormier who was commentating on the event, escalating into a war of words with Fakh͏redi͏no͏v͏.

When ‘DC’ was asked about Fakh͏redi͏no͏v͏’s criticism, the former champ asked the Russian fighter to calm down as he had been gifted a victory, “That’s the problem; he’s a moron, and he just needs to recognize that he lost. Just take it—you got gifted a win. Take it and keep your head tucked down until you fight somebody next time.”

This statement by DC further irked Rinat Fakhretdinov who didn’t back down from issuing his own counter to Cormier’s criticism – “It looks like [Cormier] made a bet on an opponent that didn’t work out. I liked my fight. The criticism didn’t hurt me. Cormier is not a close person to me”. That’s a serious accusation coming from Fakhretdinov, considering he was involved in the aforementioned controversial fight in Abu Dhabi.

Fans were sure that Carlos Leal won the fight but shocked when the judges handed Fakhretdinov the decision victory. Interestingly, everybody else watching either scored the bout 29-28 or 30-27 in favor of the Brazilian. Interestin͏g͏ly͏, when ͏MMADecisions.com co͏nducted a po͏ll abo͏ut͏ the victor of the ma͏tch, a stag͏ge͏rin͏g 100% of fans ͏chose Leal as the͏ winner. In addition, MMAJunkie emphasized that 75% of viewers believed Leal won the fight. Even Joe Rogan was flabbergasted by the decision win as he called out the judging aspect of the game.

Joe Rogan agrees with Daniel Cormier on Rinat ͏Fakh͏redi͏no͏v͏’s ‘victory’ at UFC 308

It’s tough when you know that you did enough to win the bout only to come up short on the judges’ scorecards. Immediately after the bout, Carlos Leal announced that he ‘won the fight but he was defeated by the system’. One of the judges, Hadi Mohammed Ali scored 30-27 in favor of Fakhretdinov which is strange considering Leal was more dominant, landing more strikes.

This forced the multi-million dollar podcaster, Joe Rogan to comment on the loss, “I don’t know what the rules are, but I think the judges for the most part are the same judges. I think they are like travelling judges like the judges they think are the good judges. I think some of them are good judges. But every now and then, you get a decision where you’re like whoever the f–k thought the fight went that way really shouldn’t be doing this on a professional level.”

However, it seems Rinat ͏Fakh͏redi͏no͏v͏ is unaffected by all the criticism, as he’s sticking by his guns and accusing Daniel Cormier of being biased. Do you think Daniel Cormier’s comments made sense? State your thoughts in the comments below.