Former UFC middleweight and bantamweight title challenger Chel Sonnen believes Mike Bell may have had reason to give the fifth round of the title fight between Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko to the reigning UFC lightweight champion and thus decide the fate of the matchup.
According to “American Gangster”, the referee, thanks to which the fight ended in a draw by split decision, could have been influenced by the moment in the final five minutes, when Grasso took a dominant position on top and began to strike, and Shevchenko overlapped and went into passive defense.
“I have to stick up for Mike Bell,” Sonnen told ESPN. “This fight could have been stopped when Grasso was throwing punches from the top and Shevchenko turned away and went into passive defense. I realize title fights don’t get stopped like that, but if you’re curled up and taking punches, Mike Bell sitting nearby could have seen it from a certain angle and made a judgment call. I’m assuming that’s what happened, but I’d like to hear from him.”
“Mike Bell may have had a reason and that’s the angle from which he saw the moment in question. I didn’t see the fight live and so I was looking at the video from different angles. I saw that Shevchenko won the round, but maybe from a different angle I would have seen it differently”
The women’s flyweight title fight, which headlined UFC Fight Night 227 in Las Vegas last weekend, went the full distance and ended in a split decision draw with scores of 48-47, 47-48 and 47-47. UFC CEO, Dana White, has already announced that Grasso and Shevchenko will complete the trilogy, however, “Bullet” will not be able to capitalize on a guaranteed title shot until he recovers from surgery on the hand he broke in the first round of the fight.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/32674-chel-sonnen-ob-yasnil-schet-10-8-v-boyu-grasso-i-shevchenko.html?rand=19907
