Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Aisling Daly vs Ericka Almeida

Here's the match video of Aisling Daly vs Ericka Almeida from yesterday's UFC show in Dublin, Ireland. This aired on UFC Fight Pass and I watched it on my HD TV using Roku. Of course the big deal here is Aisling is fighting in front of her home town fans. The crowd in the arena was bonkers especially when one of their own is fighting. Aisling lost her last fight against Randa Markos. Her main flaw is she has no ground game and that really hurt her against Randa. Ericka lost her UFC debut to Julianna Lima. She came in on short notice and the weight cut really affected her. Ericka is a submission specialist but Aisling is bigger and her size could offset Ericka's ground skills. Aisling ended up doing a lot of stalling in this fight. The ref should have stopped it but he didn't. Round one was fairly even until Aisling got a takedown with a minute left in the round. Aisling spent most of the round stalling against the fence. This went on for over two minutes. She didn't advance her position and the ref never even warned her. I scored the round 10-9 for Aisling but the ref didn't do his job. If he shows early in the fight that he won't tolerate stalling, the fighter will stop doing it. He's sending the opposite message. Aisling gets a takedown in round two but just lays on her. She does attempt some ground and pound which is mostly blocked. Finally Ericka reverses and almost gets a rear naked choke. But I gave Ericka round two 10-9. Again in round three, Aisling stalls for most of the round. She tries one of those useless headlock takedowns and almost gave up her back. Instead Ericka winds up on her back and Aisling stands over her punching her ankles. She never advanced her position and the ref should have stood them up. But he didn't. So I scored round three 10-9 for Aisling and I scored the fight 29-28 in her favour. The judges scored it 30-27, 29-27 (?) and 29-28 for Aisling. I don't think the ref did his job and that really affected this fight. He needs to prevent the stalling and he didn't do that. Enjoy the video!