AJ Agazarm made headlines after Bellator 243 and it had very little to do with his actual performance. The American grappler is certainly no stranger to controversy, having spent a good portion of his BJJ career making headlines for all the wrong reasons and despite being in the very early stages of his MMA career, it doesn’t look as though he’s changed at all.
Agazarm lost a pretty convincing Unanimous Decision to Cris Lencioni which took his MMA record to 3-2 at Bellator 243, but it seems he took issue with the judges presiding over the fight. Specifically, he took aim at Douglas Crosby and claimed that the relationship Crosby had with both himself and Lencioni made him unfit to work the fight and as such, it should be overturned and the fight should be declared a Draw.
While this isn’t an unreasonable complaint on the face of it, his request to have the decision overturned isn’t really all that reasonable considering the lopsided nature of the fight. Especially not when you consider that Crosby was the only judge who actually scored a round in Agazarm’s favor, judging the fight as 29-28 for Lencioni compared to the other judge’s scores of 30-27 and 30-26.
The post-fight interview started out a little more light-heartedly however with Agazarm saying “I don’t want to talk to the media, I have to talk to the media,” which was quickly corrected by a member of the Bellator PR department. The fact was that only winners were obliged to take part in post-fight interviews and there was no need for Agazarm to speak to the media at Bellator 243.
Alongside his complaint about judging, things were made worse by the fact that Agazarm landed a pretty clear headbutt when he had his opponent mounted in the first round and managed to avoid being penalized. In the post-fight interview however, Agazarm claimed that “He lifted me up and slammed my head, it was unintentional, and it made him take control of the first and second rounds.” His statement pretty much flied in the face of what anyone who was watching the fight could see quite clearly.
While Agazarm seems unlikely to get his wish and his record seems set at 3-2, Bellator should take this opportunity to learn from their mistakes and avoid any potential grounds for complaints of bias in judging for future events.
