Lôro with Ring of Combat belt won in December 2010
Keeping with the theme of dubious judges’ decisions stirred up by Thursday’s under-65-kg division final at the World Pro in Abu Dhabi (read both sides here and here), similar protests arose regarding the Marcos “Lôro” Galvão-Joe Warren superfight at the Bellator 41 show held last night in Yuma, Arizona. The general consensus on message boards and blogs from pundits and fans alike is that the Brazilian won the first two rounds and the third went to the Greco-Roman wrestling world champion – but in the end it was the Team Quest representative whose hand was raised. However, while the 30-year-old veteran from team Nova União says he is outraged at the treatment he received at the hands of the judges, he is also taking the setback as added motivation for his second-coming in the big leagues since exiting Shooto and the WEC two years ago.
“I was robbed!” said the Nova União fighter over the Nextel radio the day after being handed the controversial decision. “I beat him up in rounds one and two. He won the third, but there’s no way he took rounds one and two,” he said, accepting that the fight wasn’t a complete washout to his opponent, before launching into the substance of his complaint.
Lôro is no stranger to decisions, but what he says bugs him about this one is incoherence in the criteria with which the fight was scored: “I won that fight any way you look at it; but if they thought he (Warren) won, then he could only have won on takedowns, because that’s the only thing he managed to do,” he explained. “But in the first round I beat him in everything, especially takedowns. So how could one of them give him all three rounds?” referring to Chuck Wolf’s scorecard, reading 30-27 for Warren. But however indignant the Jiu-Jitsu and MMA teacher at Vitor “Shaolin” Ribeiro’s New York academy said he was, as soon as his grievances had been voiced, the anger was swiftly turned into cheerful optimism.
“Now I feel even more motivated to train. I know I fought well in that fight; I fought the 145-lb GP champion and should have won. The Bellator guys said I fought well, so now I want to be in the 135-lb GP so I can beat Joe Warren again, but this time I’ll finish him off,” he said, adding, “I said I was going to shock everyone before the fight. Now I’m really going to shock them. I’m going to win it all.”