Featherweight Isaac Dulgarian has accused his UFC Vegas 88 opponent of cheating, claims Christian Rodriguez used lotion to ‘lube’ up his body.
Despite dominating the opening round, Dulgarian ended up losing a razor-close split decision to Christian Rodriguez on the main card of UFC Vegas 88, with fans putting the judges under the microscope once again.
The 27-year-old has now shared his reaction to the controversial loss on social media and has added more fuel to the fire by accusing Rodriguez of using lotion or lubricant on his body to mitigate Dulgarian’s superior wrestling: “I know when people are cheating.”
Isaac Dulgarian accuses UFC Vegas 88 opponent of cheating
It wouldn’t be an Apex card if there wasn’t at least a tinge of controversy and this week, UFC fans have gotten plenty of in-cage debates and out-of-octagon disagreements to contend with after another lively night in Las Vegas.
One such point of controversy was the main card bout between featherweights Isaac Dulgarian and Christian Rodriguez, which ended in a razor-close split decision with the now 11-1 Rodriguez getting the nod from the judges.
Reacting to the loss on Instagram, Dulgarian was understandably frustrated at the scorecards going against him considering the amount of control time he retained in the opening rounds:
“I don’t feel like I lost this fight, and as you can tell I’m not super banged up. Round one I scored a 10-8 across the scorecards, and round two I had about four minutes and 10 seconds of control time, only really ate one significant trike…Yet somehow two of these judges gave him round two.”
The 27-year-old Kansas native then made the serious accusation that Rodriguez had cheated by using lotion or some type of lubricant to make his body harder to hold on to for the grappling-heavy Dulgarian:
“One thing I did notice though is that I had to use a lot of strength and energy to keep this guy down. About three minutes into round one and I’m completely dry and this guy is shining, I’ve grappled thousands of bodies and I know when people are cheating.”
“This guy was lubed up, he had lotion on or something, and it is what it is, I can’t really do anything about it,” said Dulgarian.
All cheating accusations should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt as Rodriguez’s upper body was checked by an official for such lotion or lubricant before he entered the cage on Saturday without an issue being raised.
UFC Vegas 88 was the first professional loss for Dulgarian, whose record now stands at 6-1, whilst Rodriguez climbed to 11-1 and who has now taken the undefeated records of his last three opponents: Dulgarian, Raul Rosas Jr, and Cameron Saaiman.