Contender Series 93 results: three decisions, model goes 5-for-5

Three decisions on a show that has spent the whole season refusing to go to the judges. That was Dana White's Contender Series 93 on Tuesday night at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas: five fights, five favorites winning, three undefeated records gone, and only two of the five ending before the final horn.

On Tuesday morning I wrote that 22 of the season's first 30 Contender Series fights had ended early, and that the judges had almost stopped being part of the format. The five men who took the cage that evening apparently did not read it. Eight decisions in six weeks became eleven in seven, and the season's finish rate is now 24 of 35.

What happened

Norbert Novenyi Jr. def. Theo Haig, unanimous decision, 29-28 x3 (middleweight). Novenyi dropped Haig in the first round and then spent the next ten minutes wrestling: six takedowns from nine attempts, four of them in the third, and 5:36 of control time. He out-landed Haig 27 to 15 in significant strikes. Haig still got his own two takedowns and 4:37 of control, and all three judges gave him one round. Novenyi goes to 11-1, Haig to 7-2.

Alvi Dasuyev def. Jaden Ortega, unanimous decision, 30-27, 29-28, 30-27 (welterweight). Busy from the first bell. Dasuyev threw 225 significant strikes, landed 88 of them, and knocked Ortega down once in the first round and once in the second. Ortega kept throwing, landed 76 of his own and went hard to the body with 26 of them. Dasuyev is 10-0. Ortega's zero is gone at 6-1.

Marcos Degli def. Paris Moran, submission, round 2, 4:46 (flyweight). Two flyweights with identical 14-3 records, and one of them never got going. Degli took Moran down three times, held 6:41 of control in less than ten minutes of fighting, tried three submissions and finished it with fourteen seconds left in the second round. Moran landed five significant strikes all night.

Piero Guaylupo def. Callum Connor, unanimous decision, 30-27 x3 (lightweight). The fight of the night, and the scorecards make it look like a shutout. The two of them landed 474 significant strikes in fifteen minutes. Connor landed 265 of 377, Guaylupo 209 of 314, and Connor won the count in every single round: 83 to 62, 77 to 67, 105 to 80. Guaylupo had the only knockdown, in the first round, and the only ground strikes, ten of them. All three judges gave him all three rounds. He is 21 years old and 12-0. Connor, 8-0 coming in, leaves 8-1 after out-landing the man who beat him by 56.

Damian Piwowarczyk def. Emilio Quissua, TKO, round 1, 4:59 (light heavyweight). One second. That is how close this came to going to a second round. Quissua was actually ahead on the significant strike count, 37 to 35, when Piwowarczyk put him down for the second time and the referee waved it off with the clock showing 4:59. Quissua arrived 8-0 out of OKTAGON and leaves 8-1.

The model went five for five, and so did the market

On Monday our model published a probability for every fight on this card. Here is what it said, next to the closing betting price and what actually happened.

Five for five, and I am not going to pretend that is a triumph over the bookmakers, because every favorite at the close also won. On a night like this the model and the market agree about who, and the interesting question is how much.

Two fights answered it. The light heavyweight bout opened with Quissua a slight favorite and closed near a pick 'em; our model had Piwowarczyk at 82.3 percent, the most confident number on the card, and he finished it. The main event went the other way: the market priced Novenyi at around 83 percent, the model at 58.7, and the fight ended 29-28 on all three scorecards, with every judge handing Haig a round. Novenyi won. He did not win like a -491 favorite.

My own picks from that preview went five for five on winners and three for five on method. I had Piwowarczyk by decision, and he needed 4:59. I had Degli by TKO, and he took it to the mat instead.

The decisions problem

Here is the part that matters for the contract table. The Contender Series has been built this season around the idea that a decision is a consolation prize, and three of the five winners on Tuesday got exactly that. Dasuyev and Guaylupo are both still undefeated and both won every round on at least two cards. Novenyi beat the most credible opponent on the show. None of it looks like the first-round highlight the format rewards.

And then there is the lightweight fight. Scoring is not a strike count, and a knockdown is a real argument for round one. It is a much harder argument for rounds two and three, where nobody hit the floor and Connor out-landed Guaylupo 77 to 67 and then 105 to 80. Three judges looked at those two rounds and gave all six scores to Guaylupo. If you want to know why fighters on this show stop trusting the scorecards, that is the fight to show them.

The promotion does not publish its reasoning when it hands out deals, so I will not guess at who got one. What I will say is that a card like this is a better test of the show's stated values than any of the six before it. If the decisions are rewarded, the finish-or-nothing talking point was always softer than it sounded. If they are not, two unbeaten fighters just found out that winning every round is not the same thing as winning.

Next up is Contender Series 94 on Tuesday, September 29, headlined by Loai Abushaar against George Staines. Full stats and scorecards from this card are on the event page.