Something tells us Duane Ludwig isn’t the biggest fan of Tony Weeks after UFC Boston.
TJ Dillashaw’s coach told MMAJunkie that he felt his fighter had done enough to defend his title against Dominick Cruz at UFC Fight Night 81. “Bang” claimed that two judges scoring the fight in favour of the Dominator was a poor call and that his fighter won three rounds out of five.
“I felt we won the fight. We won the first round, the fourth round and the fifth round. Three rounds to two, we won. It was a bad call.”
Sal D’Amato was the only judge who scored the fight in favour of Dillashaw, giving him the nod for rounds one, three, four and five. Dave Ginsberg scored the fight 48-47 for Cruz, giving him the first three rounds while Tony Weeks gave Cruz rounds two through five.
Here's the Cruz, Dillashaw scorecard. Not a lot of agreement between these three (which in this case, was expected). pic.twitter.com/6lvnT50OhE
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) January 18, 2016
Unsurprisingly, Ludwig took issue with Weeks’ scoring of the fight, hinting that the judge may be incompetent at doing his job. He admitted that Weeks is more than qualified to be a UFC judge, but seemed baffled at his decision to award Cruz four rounds.
“Tony Weeks doesn’t know what the (expletive) he is doing. These judges have to earn a blue belt in jiu-jitsu and for one or two years Thai box – not cardio kickboxing at the UFC gym, so they know exactly what the (expletive) they’re doing. Lives and livelihoods are on the line when they make these (expletive) up calls, and it’s not right.”
“But that aside, we should have finished the fight. I’ll accept responsibility. Maybe we need to adjust the game plan a little bit. Cruz was pretty tricky.”
One of the main arguments for Cruz winning the fight was the fact that he made Dillashaw miss so often, especially with loaded up shots. However, Ludwig argued that Cruz didn’t frustrate Dillashaw as much as it may have appeared to the untrained eye.
“The leg kicks, the kicks to the head, all the clean, power shots. Just the overall quality strikes. I know Fightmetric’s out there saying T.J. missed a bunch of shots. We throw shots on purpose to make you move, to create other openings.”
Although Ludwig did give Cruz credit for his elusiveness and going the distance with Dillashaw, although he still maintains that his fighter won the fight.
“Some of the shots we legitimately missed, 100 percent, but a lot of those shots are shots that we train in our system, that we throw to create other openings. It’s just coming from an uneducated standpoint.”
