Claudia Gadelha defeated Cortney Casey via unanimous decision Saturday night at UFC Fight Night 100, and would still have won even if referee Fernando Portella had deducted a point when she threw an illegal kick in the third round.
Casey was sitting on the ground when Gadelha threw a kick at her head. The Brazilian immediately apologized to her opponent, but later that night, at the post-fight press conference at the Ibirapuera gymnasium in Sao Paulo, Brazil, that the kick actually didn’t land. Casey disagrees.
"She won," Casey told the UFC after the loss. "And she kicked me in the head."
MMA Fighting reached out to Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission’s COO Cristiano Sampaio on Sunday to find out why Portella did not deduct a point even though Casey was given a few minutes to recover.
"Because the kick didn’t land, the athlete forged the injury," Sampaio said in a statement. "Had she not done that, and not used that time to her benefit and rest, he would have deducted the point. Had the kick landed, Claudia could get two points deducted or being disqualified. (Casey’s) conduct was wrong and unsportsmanlike, which could even be interpreted by the referee as she was giving up on the fight. The point was not deducted because of her attitude. It was an atypical situation and (the referee) acted correctly under our interpretation."
Gadelha improved to 14-2 as a professional fighter with the decision, while Casey dropped to 6-4 following her third loss in five UFC bouts.