UFC 331: Iwo Baraniewski's unbeaten run ends on one judge's card
UFC 331 results for Iwo Baraniewski: a 29-28, 28-29, 29-28 split loss to Alonzo Menifield, his first as a pro, and what the stats, fans and market said.
Iwo Baraniewski is 9-1.
The Warsaw light heavyweight walked into UFC 331 on Saturday night at Crypto.com Arena with four first-round finishes in four UFC appearances, three Performance of the Night checks, and a professional career in which no opponent had ever heard the horn for round two. He walked out with a split-decision loss to Alonzo Menifield, 29-28, 28-29, 29-28, after fifteen minutes that two of three judges gave to the 38-year-old and most of the people watching gave to him.
Search interest in this card from Poland jumped this week, and it is not hard to guess why. So here is the Baraniewski fight in full, from the bout page, with the judges, the stats, the fans and the market laid side by side.
What the cards say
Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0
Chris Leben and Jovany Varela scored it 29-28 for Menifield. Ron McCarthy scored it 28-29 for Baraniewski. All three gave Baraniewski the first round, all three gave Menifield the second, and the third is where the fight was decided: Leben and Varela for Menifield, McCarthy for Baraniewski. Referee Jonathan Romero had nothing to do all night, since neither man was dropped once.
The totals lean the other way. Baraniewski landed 67 of 121 significant strikes at 55 percent. Menifield landed 62 of 162 at 38 percent. Baraniewski controlled for 4:19 to Menifield's 2:54 and took Menifield down in the first round on his only attempt of that round. Menifield's answer was volume, 140 of 246 total strikes to 89 of 146, and his one takedown of the night came in round three, the round that decided it.
Round by round, the numbers are a coin flip. Round two: Menifield 34 of 81, Baraniewski 33 of 50. Round three: Menifield 18 of 39, Baraniewski 17 of 29. One landed strike separated the two men in each of the rounds the judges gave Menifield, and in both he needed a lot more attempts to get there.
The public did not see it Menifield's way. Of 253 fan scorecards filed on the bout, 63 percent had Baraniewski, and 56.5 percent of all cards read exactly 29-28 for him. Fans gave him round one at 98 percent, then flipped: 53 percent gave Menifield round two and 76 percent gave him round three. The press split too. Seven of the 13 media scorecards we track went to Menifield and six to Baraniewski, with Nolan King of MMA Junkie and Erich Richter of the New York Post among those who had the Pole winning. My breakdown of all three UFC 331 splits has every card, and every one of McCarthy's.
What it cost, and what comes next
Before the fight, everybody had Baraniewski. Twenty-four sportsbooks closed him at -313 on average, a 76 percent implied favorite, and the line had moved his way on fight day from -249 at the open. Our model had him at 69 percent. Of the 63 readers who called the fight on our pick'em board, 83 percent took him. Menifield closed at +256, and the best price on him anywhere was +525.
It should be noted what Baraniewski was giving up in experience. His three UFC wins, over Ibo Aslan, Austen Lane and Junior Tafa, lasted a combined 3 minutes and 22 seconds. Menifield, who earned his own contract on the Contender Series back in 2018, had already gone the full fifteen minutes seven times inside the Octagon before Saturday. He came in ranked 14th on the media panel's light heavyweight list and 13th on the UFC's own Meta rankings, and the win gives him two straight after his first-round stoppage of Zhang Mingyang in May. The September 15 board is still the one showing on our light heavyweight rankings page as I write this, with Jan Błachowicz at 9 as Poland's only name on it.
Baraniewski's ledger reads differently now. The loss ends a nine-fight run that began at Babilon MMA in September 2023 and ran through a 21-second knockout on the Contender Series and three UFC bonuses worth, by our estimate, $250,000. There was no fourth check on Saturday: the $100,000 awards went to Joshua Van and Alexandre Pantoja for the main event, and to Arman Tsarukyan and Casey O'Neill for their finishes, as covered in the UFC 331 payouts piece.
What he takes home instead is the first fifteen-minute fight of his professional life, against a ranked opponent, with most of the room scoring it for him. Whether the panel reads that as a debut on the ranked list or a loss that keeps him off it is their call, and they have not made it yet. No next fight is booked for either man.