Alex Pereira was robbed of the UFC middleweight belt in 2023 because no middleweight…

You think 189 body shots should’ve been enough to secure a decision without a single swing from Pereira getting counted? Alright, let’s say those 189 kicks were like rain on a tin roof – loud and constant, but when Izzy lands his single punch combo that drops him, every judge writes it off because the crowd was too busy counting knees to notice the knockout.

body shots yeah but the *knees* where it’s all at?! nah nah nah izzy lands one? one! and Pereira’s on the deck🤬 where was the damage in that? none of em just pure luck slap that card dwn the judges were blind as bats mate remember Tokyo 2022? Izzy took knees to the body non stop from Costa, walked away fresh as a daisy, judges scored it clear round🔥 now suddenly 189 kicks not enough but one stray shot is the decider ah well, nowt to do

You hear the comparison to Tokyo 2022 and you’ve got to laugh — Izzy Costa there, strolling out with five round cards reading 48-47 or 49-46, right? Five times over twelve minutes the judges tallied those body knees as if they were invisible. Now here, 189 kicks land, the crowd’s on its feet counting each one like a metronome set to destruction, and overnight those same knees that gave Izzy a clear win elsewhere become no damage at all? One punch, one flash in the pan, and suddenly the whole gym’s erased from memory.

remember when izzy fought vitor and took a body shot every minute like it was a free coffee refill at 7am nobody blinked back then the judges blinked harder at a stray elbow than a thousand kicks in the bunker that tokyo fight with costa though, where izzy walked away with the same cards on every round as if he’d done a yoga retreat between legs? here we had 189 body shots land with the echo of a factory whistle every two seconds and suddenly one lucky slap decides it? the judges’ clipboards must’ve been calibrated in 2014 because the rest of the planet’s moved on ah well, we’ll see

felt like someone just walked into the pub, chugged half a pint of last year’s complaint tea, then banged it down and expected us all to toast the clean sheets they’ve invented this time.

how many times did Izzy post that one lucky right hand on his résumé before this fight if we’re counting body shots as the real judge?

Those 189 body shots weren’t just rain on a tin roof, mate—they were a storm warning the judges apparently missed while scribbling in their notepads. BadBeat_Hater’s got it dead right about Izzy walking away fresh after Costa’s knees in Tokyo; I remember sitting there thinking the judges were either hard of hearing or simply allergic to acknowledging damage that didn’t come from a flying elbow. But here’s where it gets personal—last November in Nottingham, I was at that same Octagon scene for an amateur fight where the opponent landed 147 body kicks and never once saw them count on the scorecards. The ref’s eyes were glued to the knockdowns, not the accumulation. So I get why this feels like déjà vu: one stray shot gets mythologised overnight while 189 documented ones vanish like they never happened. The crowd’s chanting Pereira, the cards should’ve mirrored it, but the judges? They were reading last decade’s hymn book.

Saw BadBeat yapping about the knees so I chucked a bowl of crisps at the screen — wrong move, they’re now on the ceiling. But he’s half right; Izzy does take a million knees and saunters out, judges scribble 48-47 like it’s homework. Thing is, 189 kicks ain’t homework, mate — they’re industrial machinery punching your ribs every two seconds for 25 minutes straight. Tell me that doesn’t leave marks. And remember Octagon 1? Pereira’s dropping Isis and Izzy on his back with one right hand while all those kicks rain down? That wasn’t a lucky slap — that was the gap closing from the inside out. The judges should’ve seen the forest; instead they counted saplings. Body kicks are bruise compound interest. You don’t lose sleep over one late kick in Barnsley Saturday league, but 189? That’s assault with intent to flatten. Yet when Izzy tags one — bam — the whole equation flips like a dodgy pancake. Once I put £20 on Pereira at 7/2 after Bellator Paris because the spread was -3.5 and odds looked thinner than airport coffee. Next day the bookie’s mug still had my name in sharpie. Still, I’d swap that 20 quid for a judge spotting 189 body shots instead of one stray right. Judges, ref, scorecards — the real crime is they counted knees last week and forgot how to count tonight. 💸😤

yeah nah that’s the wrong ref you’re tryna sue mate, not izzy’s body count 😂

well, reds, you're barking up the wrong tree mate when you compare a barnsley saturday league kick to 189 landed in the ufc with the ocreotide on the line and the whole planet watching. these aren't the same crisp packet thuds you're used to in nottingham forums after a couple of pints, these are olympic-grade body shots landing on a middleweight champion whose ribs are already a different colour than his trunks by round three. one stray right hand in manchester isn't evidence—it's a siren that the judges followed while ignoring the smoke billowing from the factory floor next door. you remember manny vs diaz? the fans knew it was a robbery the moment he lifted the strap, but the judge's scorecards wrote it in permanent ink before the first bell even rang. izzy gets tagged once clean and suddenly the crime stats flip—his résumé goes from "13 tko victories" to "lucky chap who somehow dodged 189 industrial-grade battering rams." but hang on: what about the body shot that won alex the strap against howell? what about the round-four counter that dropped isis with pure rib pain while the crowd chanted so loud you could hear it on newcastle's quayside? those weren't lucky slaps either—they were the punctuation marks on a body-shot masterclass. and your 7/2 punt at bellator paris? legend status. but if you'd stood ringside last november with me in the octagon corner you'd have seen alex's back actually twitch every time that low kick made contact, like a burglar alarm wired to the spine. judges see numbers on paper; the body sees damage in real time—and 189 entries in the police log should’ve shown up on the scorecards, not as an afterthought scribbled in pencil while the security guard yawns at the door.

Izzy’s resumé already lists body shots as a hallmark—not a liability. You’d think that’d help him in a fight where Pereira treated his midsection like a speed-bag on steroids. Funny how one lucky right ends up as “visionary striking” while 189 deliberate impacts get filed under “unnoticed collateral.” I was ringside for the Jan 2023 LHW fight where Teixeira dropped Jamahal with body work every round; judges gave him the nod despite Jam having five minutes of Stanley Kubrick-level face damage. Same script, different division: favours the guy who lands the punch, forgets the bruise pattern.

Thing is, I’ve sat in three different Octagons where Alex’s body work was the main event and the cards still couldn’t be arsed to catch up. Last February in Abu Dhabi, he peppered that clown Albufeira with 142 body shots inside the distance—you could see the referee and judges flinch every time Alex twisted those kicks into the ribcage like a chef testing the turkey’s juices. But when the final bell hit, three white corners still handed Albufeira the split round because one clean rear-naked attempt left the room screaming “Robbery!” instead of the 30 seconds of non-stop low-kick tattoo that came right after. That Abu Dhabi crowd literally chanted “Give it to Alex” for three minutes straight; the judges pretended they were deaf to 142 registered strikes while hyper-focusing on one guillotine threat that never even secured the tap. Same story again in Dublin last July: Alex dropped Bergsons with a body shot that sounded like a sledgehammer on a tin drum, yet the judge gave Bergsons the round because Izzy threw two counter-rights in a 5-second window. The pattern? One flashy punch outshines 142 silent bruises every single time.

Right, so we’ve turned the Octagon into a bloody sacrifice to the scorecard gods, and the gods are laughing all the way to the bank while Alex’s ribs look like a deflated bouncy castle. Tell me this—when Izzy taps once because his arm’s around Alex’s neck, the crowd goes apeshit and the judges scribble a round for him like he just solved quantum physics, yet when Pereira’s front-kicking a salsa of bruises across Izzy’s midsection for 189 documented strikes, suddenly the “damage didn’t register” excuse is paraded around like a new Olympic sport. The ref’s card isn’t the issue, lads—the judges’ dementia is the real robbery, and I’d rather lose my season ticket to Cardiff Arms Park than watch three blokes in ties pretend they’re colorblind while the biggest body shot masterclass in UFC history gets flushed down the memory hole.

Mate, do you ever walk into a chip shop in Sheffield and see them pile a mountain of scraps on your tray and wonder how on earth that’s actually food? No—you chow down because it’s perfect. That’s what Pereira served Izzy last November: a whole mountain of body shots stacked higher than the greasy spoon’s breakfast mountain. 189 of them—each one landing with the kind of crack you’d get fined for in a back-alley car park fight, yet the judges only saw one slippery right hand in the entire monsoon. You remember what the ref did that night? He didn’t collapse like a house of cards; he actually pulled Izzy over to the corner after round three and told him to tighten his guard. That’s medical language for “your insides might be trying to stage a mutiny.” Meanwhile the scorecards are still treating 189 bullet holes as background noise while one lucky shot gets framed and hung in the UFC hall of fame. But then Octagon 1 happens—Alex drops Isis with a body counter so vicious the crowd noise actually set off the fire alarms in the arena—and suddenly the tape shows the full picture. A few weeks later it’s the same bloke eating 189 kicks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner while the judges serve up dessert: a split decision that feels less like justice and more like a typo in an Excel file. Still, I could be wrong—but tell me this: if the UFC scored fights with rib bruise intensity instead of punch volume, would the crime scene photos or the final tally of punches matter more? The bruises don’t lie, lads; they just need a judge who can read them.