On March 2, 2013, Yushin Okami fought Hector Lombard at the Super Saitama Arena in Saitama, Japan. UFC fans in the Inland Empire watched the UFC on Fuel TV 8 and saw Okami beat Lombard by split decision, but many were baffled by the official scorecards.
In the first round of the fight, Okami outstruck Lombard on the feet and scored two takedowns on Lombard. At the end of the round, Lombard tried to take Okami down, but Okami stuffed his takedown attempt.
In the second round of the fight, Okami again outstruck Lombard on the feet. Okami scored a takedown, and the round ended with Okami mounting Lombard.
The third round was Lombard's best round. Lombard spent much of the round on top of Okami, doing to Okami what Okami did to him in the first and second rounds.
Fortunately for Okami, he rightly won his fight against Lombard. However, members of the media believed that Okami should have won a unanimous decision, not a split decision.
On the show Beatdown After the Bell on sherdog.com, TJ De Santis said, “Looking at mmadecisions.com...looking at it for the Yushin Okami-Hector Lombard fight. One judge scored the bout 29-28 for Hector Lombard. No media score had that. What the hell is going on? How did Hector Lombard get a card?”
On the show, Sam Genovese said, “Hector didn’t win that fight...there’s not a chance that he did.”
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