Jamey-Lyn Horth left scratching head at UFC Winnipeg loss: 'Completely confident we won'
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Jamey-Lyn Horth says she barely has a scratch on her – which is ironic considering all the head-scratching she's done since Saturday's UFC Fight Night 273 loss.
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The fight was the third fight on the preliminary card, but ended up a main talking point from the event at Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Horth (9-3 MMA, 4-3 UFC) lost a unanimous decision to JJ Aldrich (15-7 MMA, 11-6 UFC) with 29-28s turned in from all three judges. Despite the consistent ruling from the three people with the most important opinions, many viewers who watched the fight were left stunned when Joe Martinez announced the final verdict.
"I would say we were completely confident we won that fight, and even I think when her hand was raised, (Aldrich) didn't smile," Horth told MMA Junkie on Tuesday. "She didn't look happy at all."
Horth usually waits a little while to watch back her fights, but this one was different. She sought an answer for Saturday's result, so she watched it back Monday. Her coaches all watched it individually, as well.
Was the team's perception in the moment warped? Did their memories mislead them?
The answer to each of those questions was "no," Horth said.
"When I watched it, I'm like, 44 seconds of cage control, but over the entire fight," Horth said. "I had the center of the cage and was moving forward, and she was moving back. I mean, you even hear her coaches say to her, 'We gotta stop moving back, we can stand with her, we can exchange with her,' and it's like they acknowledged it blatantly on TV that she was constantly moving back. The significant strikes that I landed, the damage that I had, not that it means anything post-fight, but she left on a stretcher to the hospital. So it's like, I don't really know at what point we didn't control the center of the ring, land the more significant strikes, and do more damage. I mean, that's kind of the criteria for judging, if I'm not mistaken. So I'm not really sure. The only thing is the 44 seconds of her two attempts to take me down, which were unsuccessful. So yeah, I'm not too sure."
While the final scorecards presented the same tally, a round-by-round analysis shows the three judges only agreed on one round: Round 3 for Aldrich. The first and second rounds were split among the judges.
One judge, Junichiro Kamijo, is a widely-used judge with hundreds of UFC fights worked. However, the other two judges didn't have nearly the same experience level. Dr. Greg Jackson had not scored a UFC fight since 2018 and Laura Baldwin had never scored a UFC fight prior to Saturday's event.
According to Tapology, the province of Manitoba had only held three combat sports events between 2019 and Saturday. Horth wondered if perhaps lack of repetitions could have contributed to the final outcome, and theorized a potential solution if that was indeed the problem.
"The fact that Manitoba isn't really a place that has a lot of events, they haven't had a UFC fight there since 2017, does that play into it?" Horth said. "That the commission isn't very much immersed and not getting involved frequently in this position? Are they ringside, etc.? Are they up to date on the criteria? I'm sure this is all tru., I'm sure they have all these things, but my initial thoughts are like, we have a UFC roster that travels around with the UFC, and then the commission in each jurisdiction is different. But with judging, is there any way to have more consistent judging? Like with referees, where you have a pool of referees that you bring with you wherever you go. Is there not some way to maybe have some sort of judging where you have a certain amount of judges so that the testing and the criteria for judging is relatively the same for every fight and every fighter?"
Media and fans largely disagreed with the official decision, with 92 percent of fans scoring the fight for Aldrich and nine of 10 media members doing the same (per MMA Decisions).
Horth said Iridium Sports Agency, which represents her, is weighing options about a potential appeal. However, scoring appeals leading to action seldom result in anything besides a denial. Given that, Horth remains optimistic, as she awaits her next fight offer.
It's a silver lining that doesn't offset half of her potential pay evaporating, but Horth hopes the promotion views the fight as a win as they continue to handle her career going forward.
"I know my agents are very much connected with the matchmakers and the team with the UFC, and I trust that they'll get me set up and sort of figure things out," Horth said. "That's kind of why I think I have this weird intuitive feeling in my gut that something's gonna happen, and I just don't know what it is. But I really do feel like there's been some conversations with my agent (Jason House) and some of the UFC team, and they felt sort of along the lines of, 'What the f*ck?' And yeah, I hope that having a loss on my record is one thing, but it's just like the trajectory of which I feel like I was climbing and sort of getting favorable fights or matchups and being treated as, 'maybe this was just a mistake that we just can't actually overturn, but we can sort of work on.'"
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Jamey-Lyn Horth left scratching head at UFC Winnipeg loss: 'Completely confident we won'