Kevin Holland and Uros Medic fought to a majority draw at UFC 334 on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. The fight included two low blows, a second-round point deduction and a reading of the scorecards that left the broadcast desk openly baffled. The official cards were 29-27 for Medic and 28-28 twice. Those numbers only surfaced after Bruce Buffer had already announced the wrong ones.
Buffer first read the scores as 30-27, 29-28 and 28-28, and Yahoo Sports reported that this sent Jon Anik, Daniel Cormier and Joe Rogan into a math spiral. Two decisive cards plus a draw card adds up to a majority decision, so the desk assumed Holland had won and the result made no sense. “It just doesn’t make sense,” Rogan said. Cormier asked, “How do we get to a draw here?” MMA Fighting’s initial results post even listed the third card as 30-27 for Holland before the corrected 29-27 Medic card made the rounds, including on MMA Junkie’s X account.
The corrected scores weren’t much better. Per the scorecard Uncrowned posted, judges Mike Bell and Chris Lee gave Round 1 to Holland and Rounds 2 and 3 to Medic. That’s 29-28 Medic, which became 28-28 after the deduction. David Bruce gave all three rounds to Medic. That includes the first round, where Holland scored a knockdown, swarmed with uppercuts and locked up a D’Arce choke that Medic survived twice before escaping near the horn.
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The second round is where things got ugly for Holland’s cup. Medic landed a kick to the groin early, and Holland recovered quickly. A second one later in the round took him considerably longer to shake off, and referee Marc Goddard took a point. MMA Junkie posted footage of Holland pulling his cup out and rolling over in pain. MMA Fighting noted it was another night of Holland eating groin strikes.
Medic’s best moment came in Round 3. Cageside Press described a big knee that badly rocked Holland, but Medic backed off instead of finishing the job. He didn’t turn the pressure back up until the last few seconds. Holland used his 10-inch reach advantage to keep Medic at the end of oblique kicks for most of the night. According to the official stats cited by Yahoo Sports, Holland also out-landed him in total and significant strikes, had more ground control time and went 2-for-0 in takedowns.
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It was the first time Medic’s fight went to the judges. For Holland, the draw beats a loss, but it leaves him with one win in his past four fights.
The broadcast got weird after the scores, too. A Reddit user on r/MMA claimed that as Rogan and Cormier kept picking apart the cards, Anik started yelling “Yikes!” over them and then pivoted hard to fighters in the crowd. Nobody has confirmed that the desk was told to drop it, so file that one under internet theory.
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My take: Holland got kicked in the groin twice, nearly put a man to sleep and won the stat sheet, then left the Garden with a draw because one judge watched a near-choke-out and saw a Medic round. I don’t blame Buffer. Reading wrong numbers is a bad night. Scoring Round 1 for the guy stuck in a D’Arce is a bad job, and David Bruce owes Holland more than an explanation.
