Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Randa Markos vs Carla Esparza

Here's the match video of Randa Markos vs Carla Esparza from last night's UFC show in Halifax. After Carla lost the UFC Strawweight Championship, she had shoulder surgery. Now she's on the comeback trail to get back into the title picture. Her forte is wrestling. I think she needs to improve in other areas to get where she wants to go. Randa is a pretty good wrestler who loses when she makes mistakes. Carla wanted to fight Randa because they didn't get along during TUF 20. Carla needs a dominant win but I think she underestimated Randa. The first two rounds are very similar. Nothing much happened for the first half of each round. In both rounds, Carla scores a takedown. In round one, Randa reverses it so I scored round one 10-9 for Randa. In round two, Carla comes close to a submission but runs out of time. I scored round three 10-9 for Carla. In round three, the key blow was Carla's knee to Randa's head while she was down. But ref Keith Peterson missed the call. He's looking right at it. What a bozo! So I scored round three 10-9 for Carla but I took off the point that Peterson missed. So I scored the fight a draw. The judges gave Randa the win by split decision. And if they had scored it for Carla, Randa would have had grounds for appeal due to the missed call. It doesn't matter much. Though it's a big win for Randa over a ranked opponent, Carla needed to win this fight dominantly. A squeaker win would have meant nothing and it may show that time has passed her by and her game is not developing. She's not improving and maybe she'll never improve. She's out of the title picture now. Enjoy the video!