Calvin Kattar isn’t calling foul on the judges at UFC Austin but he still believes he should be leaving his main event clash against Josh Emmett with a win rather than a split decision loss.
In a back-and-forth war over five rounds, Kattar believed he dished out more damage round over round and that should have been enough to deserve the victory on the scorecards.
“I thought I was just going to get my hand raised at the end,” Kattar said on the UFC post fight show. “I didn’t care, sometimes we give a s*** if it’s unanimous or a split. I thought I did enough to win the fight. Josh is a class act, a tough kid. Congrats to him and his team.”
On paper, each round was difficult to score with Kattar landing with volume and Emmett firing back with bigger power in many of the exchanges.
Kattar’s best offense was a lead jab that continuously connected and ultimately busted up Emmett’s eye. In return, Emmett came after Kattar with knockout power behind almost every punch, which made the judges’ job that much harder when the final horn sounded.
“Obviously he’s got a lot of power,” Kattar said about Emmett. “You’re dealing with adversity, listening to that voice telling you to get small or you tell it to shut up and get big. Just working my way through the fight.
“Josh presented a lot of problems as a top featherweight would do. I thought I did enough to overcome them but I guess the judges saw it another way.”
Because the fight was so close, Kattar never took his foot off the gas so he offers no excuses regarding his performance but that’s also why he felt like he did enough to secure the decision.
“There was never a point where I thought I could sit back but I thought I was edging him out definitely,” Kattar said. “Especially the longer the fight went. Fifth round, I thought I took it. I know he wanted me to stand in the center and bang but I mean that would be cool if I wasn’t up in the fight maybe.
“I thought I was landing the better shots but I’m not a judge. So it went the way it did but I thought I did enough to win the fight.”
Understandably disappointed with the outcome, Kattar still offered up his congratulations to Emmett on his win as he plans to return home to rewatch the fight to better understand what went wrong that led to the split decision loss.
“Just that I thought I did enough to beat a high caliber opponent,” Kattar said. “Just have to go back, check the tape, see what’s up but really kind of just got more questions than anything.”