Melissa Gatto did the arithmetic in her head while Bruce Buffer was still reading the cards, and the numbers didn’t add up. They still don’t. A majority draw against Ernesta Kareckaite at UFC Vegas 122, scored 29-27, 28-28 and 28-28, is the kind of result that makes you want to grab a pencil and a napkin and work it out yourself. So I did. My conclusion is that the Brazilian flyweight has every right to be steamed, and the two judges who turned in 28-28 owe somebody an explanation.
Start with what everybody agrees on. Kareckaite lost a point in the first round for grabbing the fence. That deduction exists for one reason: to cost the fighter who cheats. Gatto, speaking to AG Fight after the bout, laid out her own scorecard in plain terms. “I thought I won the first round, they took the point away from her; I did lose the second, and I won the third.”
Plug that into the 10-point must system and you get exactly one answer. A 10-8 first round (her round, plus the deduction), a 9-10 second, a 10-9 third. That’s 29-27 Gatto, which is precisely what one judge handed in. So her math matches at least one of the three people paid to watch the fight closely.
How do you get to 28-28?
This is where it gets ugly. With a point already gone from Kareckaite’s total, there are only two realistic routes to a 28-28 card. Either a judge gave Kareckaite Round 1, the same round in which she got caught holding the fence, so the deduction merely evened the round out at 9-9. Or a judge gave Gatto the first, gave Kareckaite the second, and then also gave Kareckaite the third.
Neither option looks great. The first means a judge watched a fighter break the rules badly enough to lose a point and still scored the round for her on the merits. That’s legal, technically. It also guts the whole purpose of a deduction, like a ref giving a basketball player a technical foul and then letting her shoot the free throws.
The second option means a judge gave the final round to the fighter who spent its closing seconds stuck in an armbar. Gatto told AG Fight the lock was tight even with one second left, with the referee already reaching in. Maybe Kareckaite banked enough work earlier in that round to steal it. The sources don’t give us round-by-round stats, so I won’t pretend to know. But a fighter ending a round fighting for her elbow is a strange picture of the winner.
And two judges took one of those roads. Not one rogue card. Two.
Even the opponent apparently saw it her way
Gatto isn’t the only one who scored it for Gatto. UFC commentator Michael Bisping said he felt she won, and Bisping has never been shy about telling the audience a decision was bad. More damning, according to Gatto, is how Kareckaite reacted in the cage. “I thought I had won, she also thought I had won, she congratulated me,” Gatto said.
That’s Gatto’s account, so weigh it accordingly. Still, when the fighter across from you is offering congratulations before the cards are read, it tells you how the room felt. Gatto said she was incredulous when she heard “majority draw” and added, “I really thought it was an officiating error.” I’d take it a step further. When your scorecard, the broadcast booth and possibly your opponent all land on the same winner, the error is the result.
The part she can actually control
I’m going to be fair to the judges for exactly one paragraph, because Gatto was fair to them too, sort of. She admitted the armbar came too late. “I even regret now not having tried that armlock about 20 seconds earlier,” she said, adding that maybe 15 seconds left would have been the move. It’s the oldest lesson in the sport, and every fighter learns it the hard way at least once. If you finish the fight, nobody ever has to argue about a 28-28 card. Gatto had the tap sitting in her hands and the clock ran out on her first.
That honesty is why I’m fully in her corner. She isn’t crying conspiracy. She’s pointing at a deducted point that apparently changed nothing for two judges, and she owns the late submission attempt as her own mistake. That’s a fighter who knows exactly where the fight was won and where it slipped away.
The fix is simple, and Gatto already pitched it. She said she’d take the rematch with Kareckaite if the UFC wants it, or anyone else, as long as it’s soon. “I took it to heart,” she said, before making her direct request: “UFC, please, put me in a fight in December.”
Book it. Run it back with Kareckaite in December, keep a hand off the fence this time, and let Gatto throw that armbar with 20 seconds on the clock instead of one.
