Julie Kedzie retires after split decision loss

Here's the match video of Julie Kedzie vs Bethe Correia from last night's UFC show in Brisbane, Australia. In addition to foreign fans who didn't get to see the show, there were transmission problems with Fox Sports 1 in the US. So I think a lot of fans didn't get to see the first half of the fight. Though Julie Kedzie is a women's MMA pioneer and a veteran fighter, she hasn't finished a fight in a long time. So I expected this to be a close fight. Round one was a very hard round to score because neither fighter did much. Bethe is stronger so Julie's strategy was to keep her on the outside. But she generated very little offense. And at least Bethe landed a couple of hard punches and then a takedown at the end of the round. So I scored it 10-9 for Bethe though one never knows how judges will score rounds like this. Julie was busier in round two and she was more effective. So I scored it 10-9 for Julie. Both corners are telling each fighter that she won the first two rounds. I don't know why they would do that. I think it was too close to tell them that. I thought Bethe won round three 10-9. She was more effective in that round. But I said right after the fight that I expected a split decision. Two judges scored it 29-28 for Bethe and one judge scored it 29-28 for Julie. Bethe Correia wins her UFC debut. I scored it 29-28 for Bethe but I don't think either fighter did enough to win decisively. After the fight, Julie Kedzie announced her retirement. I assume her UFC contract was up. She says the decision to retire was made before the fight. She will continue to work at Jackson's MMA. I'm glad she got to fight in the UFC as she can use that experience to help others. But the UFC probably wasn't going to renew her contract anyway. Check out the match video for yourself.