Edson Barboza’s team will appeal UFC 242 loss to Paul Felder

Paul Felder avenged a 2015 loss to Edson Barboza with a split decision win at Saturday’s UFC 242 event in Abu Dhabi, but the Brazilian’s camp isn’t happy with the way the lightweight bout was scored.

After 15 minutes of action, judge Howie Booth scored it 30-27 in favor of the Brazilian. That, however, was the only scorecard that declared Barboza the winner. Judge Maria Makemutova scored the contest 30-27 for Felder, while David Lethaby saw it 29-28 to declare “The Irish Dragon” victorious via split decision.

Since the pay-per-view event was held in Abu Dhabi, Barboza’s manager Alex Davis reached out to Marc Ratner, the UFC senior vice president of regulatory affairs, asking how to proceed to request an official review of the judges’ decision. MMAjunkie first reported the news.

“We think that the fight was judged inaccurately,” Barboza’s manager Alex Davis told MMA Fighting. “The fact that one judge gave it 30-27 Junior and one have it 30-27 Felder is a big indicator of their confusion. Our perception—and to everyone we spoke with, everyone in the arena, every journalist and media—the fight was 29-28 for Junior, who won the first two rounds.”

Davis doesn’t even agree with the judge that gave his fighter a win in all rounds. It’s highly unlikely that the result will in fact get overturned, but the manager says that “mistakes” like this should be reviewed.

“We can’t let this happen,” Davis said. “These fighters put a lot of effort and invest their time to get up there to do what they do so we have judges making these type of mistakes and not being reviewed.

“We think Junior won two rounds to one, but we wouldn’t complain if it was 29-28 Felder. Nothing against Paul Felder, he’s a great fighter, a great person, his whole team, but I think Junior did a great fight and we’ll contest this.”