On Saturday night at UFC 223 in Brooklyn, New York, Khabib Nurmagomedov took a unanimous decision over last-minute replacement Al Iaquinta to claim the UFC lightweight championship. The fight was rout, with Nurmagomedov winning every round and earning two 10-8 rounds on two of the judges’ scorecards. If you had only been listening to the fight on the radio though, you might not have known the fight was so one-sided.
Throughout the fight, UFC color commentator Joe Rogan was surprisingly critical of Nurmagomedov’s performance, particularly in the third and fourth rounds when Nurmagomedov and Iaquinta engaged almost exclusively on the feet, outside of Nurmagomedov’s usual comfort zone.