The UFC 331 scorecards were the first item at the California commission’s post-event debrief, and its executive director said one of them was not possible. All three judges gave the fight to Joshua Van, so the result is not in question. What is in question is a 50-45 card on a five-round title fight, and the same meeting put three rule changes on the table.
Key takeaways
- At the CSAC debrief after UFC 331, executive director Andy Foster called Ron McCarthy's 50-45 card for Joshua Van not possible, singling out the fourth round.
- The other two judges had it 49-46 and 48-47, all for Van, so the unanimous decision itself was never in dispute.
- The same meeting raised three rule proposals: making lateral kicks to the knee a foul, legalising a cut-healing peptide, and replacing the intentional and unintentional foul categories with incidental, reckless and malicious.
What the UFC 331 scorecards actually said
Three cards, one winner, one outlier
Ron McCarthy scored it 50-45 for Van, Sal D’Amato 49-46, Derek Cleary 48-47. Every card went the same way, which is why the belt changed nothing. The gap between a shutout and a one-round margin on the same twenty-five minutes is the part that brought the regulator to the microphone.
The round in dispute
The objection was specific: the fourth. Most of the room had Van ahead in the round until Pantoja’s takedown and Pantoja taking it after. McCarthy’s position, reported from the meeting, was that Van had done more striking before the takedown and more work from the bottom during it. D’Amato allowed that the card was not unreasonable given Van’s striking. Foster did not.
A regulator saying it out loud
According to Aaron Bronsteter’s report from the debrief, Foster said it took him some time to calm down before starting the meeting, and that he had received a lot of angry messages about the card. Commissions usually defend their officials in public and argue in private. This one inverted that, which is the genuinely unusual part of the story.
The three rule changes that came out of the same room
Lateral kicks to the knee
The proposal is to make them a foul. It surfaced because of a middleweight bout on the same card: Edmen Shahbazyan complained to the referee about Brunno Ferreira’s side kicks to the knee, apparently not realising they are legal. They are: the technique is banned in most gyms and treated as a cheap shot in sparring, and permitted in a professional fight. Shahbazyan won that bout by unanimous decision.
A cut-healing peptide
The second item is to legalise a peptide used to close cuts between rounds. That is a question about what a cutman may carry, and it sits in the same family as the debate over adrenaline chloride concentrations, which is to say it is small, technical and decided by regulators rather than fans.
Rewriting how fouls are classified
The third is the most far-reaching: replacing the current intentional and unintentional split with incidental, reckless and malicious. The present system forces an official to read a fighter’s mind at speed and produces two boxes for a spectrum of behaviour. A three-step scale with recklessness in the middle would change how eye pokes and groin strikes are punished, which touches almost every card.
They should have deferred to the secondary criteria and value the control because there was not a lot of significant offence from either fighter.
Why a debrief is worth reading
Nothing here is a rule yet
These are discussion items from one state commission, not adopted regulations. Unified rules change through the association of boxing commissions and then state by state, which takes years and usually starts exactly like this, with one executive director saying a thing out loud after a card that made it unavoidable.
The scoring problem is not a California problem
A 50-45 and a 48-47 on the same fight is not a scandal, it is the system working as designed and producing a spread that nobody can defend as a unit. Foster’s own remedy was that the judges should have leaned on the secondary criteria and valued control, given how little significant offence either fighter produced. That is a coaching note to his officials, delivered in public.
Follow the sport with real numbers
Records, finish rates, activity and our own ratings for every fighter on this card are kept up to date in the FightHub app. Download it to see what the night changed once the arguing stops.
- UFC returns to Doha on November 21, a year after selling out its Qatar debut
- Noche UFC results: Moreno snaps his skid, McMillen survives a war and Blaydes outpoints Cortes-Acosta
- The Joshua Van injury: he kept the title on a torn shoulder, with two weeks of sparring in the whole camp
- Van vs Pantoja 2: 26 seconds settled nothing, and both men think the rematch proves them right
