Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Ayaka Hamasaki vs Kanna Asakura

Here's the match video of Ayaka Hamasaki defending her RIZIN Super Atomweight Championship against Kanna Asakura. This is on RIZIN's YouTube page. You have probably already heard that Ayaka won by split decision. So my job is to assess the judges and see if they got it right. After an early round low blow, Ayaka controlled round one with strikes and a takedown until the ref stopped the fight to have the doctor look at Kanna's right eye. I think he could have waited until the end of the round because it killed Ayaka's momentum. I scored the round 10-9 for Ayaka. Round two started the same way as Ayaka took Kanna down. But Kanna reversed it and scored with strikes from top position. Ayaka made the mistake of staying on the bottom thinking she could get a submission. I scored it 10-9 for Kanna. So with the fight tied, one would think they would be extra aggressive in round three. They were both extra cautious, especially Ayaka. So the round was really a tie though I thought Kanna landed marginally more. So I scored it 10-9 for Kanna and the fight 29-28. The judges gave Ayaka a split decision win. A couple of things may have played into that. The most likely is the thinking that a challenger has to win decisively and Kanna did not win round three decisively. I don't agree with that but that's a likely reason for Ayaka winning. Check out the video for yourself.

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