Hall to become a title contender?

Saturday’s UFC Fight Night main card featured close decisions throughout, with a pair of splits and a majority decision in the final five fights of the night. The judges had their work cut out for them, but they got the biggest fight of the night, the bantamweight showdown between TJ Dillashaw and Cory Sandhagen, right?

As much as the Sandhagen-Dillashaw talks extend this week, there are two upcoming cards to keep an eye on Saturday night.

Bellator’s featherweight super fight between two-division champion Patricio “Pitbull” Freire and undefeated AJ McKee claims a brighter spotlight than Saturday’s UFC Fight Night card. The fight may even be big enough to deem the winner the best featherweight in the world.

But don’t sleep on Saturday’s UFC main event. Uriah Hall is on a roll with four straight wins and is on the verge of a huge opportunity. Will a fifth straight win against Sean Strickland, a winner of four in a row in his own right, be enough to put Hall squarely in the UFC bantamweight title picture?

Our panel, with Marc Raimondi, Jeff Wagenheim and Carlos Contreras Legaspi, delve into the hot topics to separate what’s real from what’s not.

Uriah Hall will become a title contender with a win on Saturday.
Legaspi: It’s not real. We’ve been waiting for the next ‘Anderson Silva’ for a long time, and Strickland doesn’t look like a springboard at this point.

Strickland is technically sound and durable who can fight for the full 25 minutes with a high volume of punches, or even surprise Hall with his power like he did with Brendan Allen, whom he knocked out in November. That win was even more impressive after watching Allen on Saturday, as his chin looked strong against Punahele Soriano.

At 36, Hall is riding a four-fight win streak that includes a gruesome injury to former middleweight champion Chris Weidman on a marked kick, as well as the farewell fight to the legendary Silva and a split decision against Antonio Carlos Junior. The latter two have moved on to boxing and PFL, respectively.

Hall needs a flashy win to jump up in the rankings and face a name like Paulo Costa, Marvin Vettori, Jared Cannonier or Jack Hermansson to earn a title shot.

And even though Strickland is ranked below Hall, he’s looked really impressive in the octagon since moving up from 170 to 185, and he’s also recorded four straight wins. Strickland is a really tough fight for everyone in the division right now, and on top of that, Hall can only find a small reward if a win doesn’t come with a highlight-reel finish.

Real or Not: Sandhagen was ‘robbed’ by judges in loss to Dillashaw.

Raimondi: Most media members who posted their scores on Twitter had Sandhagen beating Dillashaw by decision, according to information compiled by MMADecisions.com. I didn’t tweet my score, but I also thought Sandhagen did enough to win. After a replay on Sunday, I had Sandhagen winning the second, fourth and fifth rounds, exactly the same card that judge Derek Cleary handed out Saturday night. He was the lone dissenter. Judges Sal D’Amato and Junichiro Kamijo scored the fight for Dillashaw.

But a robbery? Absolutely not real. This was a close fight that really came down to one round.

The reason I scored those three rounds for Sandhagen was because of the damage: his punches had more effect than Dillashaw’s, in my opinion. Dillashaw absolutely won the first round. The second, when Sandhagen opened up a twisting cut near Dillashaw’s right eye, was clear for Sandhagen. And Dillashaw won the third round on all the judges’ cards. It was a pretty easy five minutes to score.