Sal D'Amato judged both UFC 330 title fights and 1,069 UFC bouts
UFC 330 scorecards: Sal D'Amato scored three of the four decisions, including both title fights, and his ledger now runs to 1,096 judged fights.
Sal D'Amato had a busy Saturday.
The most-used judge in mixed martial arts sat cageside for three of the four decisions at UFC 330 in Philadelphia, including both five-round title fights, and turned in cards that agreed with the majority in every one of them.
In the main event he had Islam Makhachev over Ian Machado Garry 49-46, giving the challenger only round three. Michael Bell scored it the same way. Eric Colón gave Garry rounds three and four for a 48-47.
In the co-main he had Mackenzie Dern over Gillian Robertson 49-46, with Robertson taking the fifth. Chris Bolinski matched him. Rick Winter gave Robertson the fourth as well and scored it 48-47.
Dern landed 65 significant strikes to Robertson's 49, went four for six on takedowns and controlled 10:48 of the 25 minutes, so the 49-46 is not a card that needs defending.
The one place D'Amato broke from the room was on the prelims. Tresean Gore defeated Vicente Luque by unanimous decision. Brent Colflesh and Bolinski both scored it 30-27 for Gore. D'Amato gave Luque the third round and made it 29-28, the only round anyone gave Luque all night. Gore outlanded him 65 to 46 with 3:45 of control.
The volume, in context
Our scorecard database has D'Amato on 1,096 fights that reached the judges, going back to a card on April 1, 2009. That splits 1,069 UFC bouts and 27 in the PFL, and 155 of them went the full five rounds.
The rest of the leaderboard for UFC decisions is not close:
| Judge | UFC decisions scored |
|---|---|
| Sal D'Amato | 1,069 |
| Derek Cleary | 663 |
| Chris Lee | 648 |
| Michael Bell | 512 |
| Junichiro Kamijo | 442 |
| Tony Weeks | 373 |
| Eric Colón | 368 |
That is 61 percent more work than the second-busiest official in the sport, accumulated over 17 years across dozens of jurisdictions, which is worth remembering before anyone blames the promotion for it. Judge assignment is a commission call, and Saturday's card fell under Pennsylvania.
Photo: Canal Faixa Preta / CC BY 3.0
For his part, D'Amato is a mainstream scorer, and the numbers say so. In 57 of those 1,096 fights he named a different winner than the other two judges, which is 5.2 percent. Roughly nineteen times out of twenty, whatever he sees is what the room sees. If you are a commission looking for a safe pair of eyes on a championship fight, that number is exactly why you keep calling.
It is also why he keeps turning up on the fights that get argued about for years. Saturday was the second Makhachev decision he has scored in nine months: he had the champion 50-45 over Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322 last November, one of three cards that gave Della Maddalena nothing at all.
Every judge's full record, including their agreement rate with fan and media scoring, is on our judges pages, and D'Amato's is here.
The UFC is back on Saturday with Hernandez vs Rodrigues in Sacramento, where California's commission picks the officials. Fourteen fights, and 45 percent of UFC bouts in 2026 have gone to the cards, so expect six of them to be settled by three people with pens.