UFC Winnipeg's Notorious Decision: When Sal D'Amato Struck Again and the Grappling Community Lost It

Back in April 2026, UFC Winnipeg delivered what will likely go down as one of the most talked-about scorecards in recent memory. When the judges' decision came down in favor of Jasmine Jasudavicius over Karine Silva in a unanimous verdict, the reaction was swift and brutal. The grappling community collectively lost it, and for once, the blame had a very specific face attached to it: Sal D'Amato, the judge who has spent nearly two decades becoming the most reliably controversial scorer in the promotion's history.

For anyone paying attention to MMA judging over the past decade and a half, the D'Amato name carries weight. Not the good kind. This was not his first rodeo, and it definitely will not be his last—which is precisely the problem that keeps staring the sport in the face every time his name appears on a scorecard.

Let's start with who should have shown up that night: Karine Silva, the Brazilian flyweight out of Curitiba whose professional record reads like a finishing clinic. Every single win on her resume came inside the distance. A significant chunk came in the first round. She represents the kind of fighter the BJJ community has been asking for since the early 2010s—someone who actually closes the show instead of banking on volume striking and cage control. Silva is not a points fighter. She does not pad her record with split decisions against gatekeepers. She enters the cage with an actual finishing game plan and executes it with the kind of consistency that makes her statistically improbable to lose decisions. The professional finishing rate in women's flyweight simply does not support decision losses becoming a pattern for someone like her.

Then the fight happened, and Jasudavicius walked out with the win. The scorecards were unanimous. And somewhere in that decision, the grappling community saw the latest installment in a story it has been forced to watch on repeat for years.

D'Amato has been judging UFC fights since the aesthetic of the cage was fundamentally different from what it is now. By every quantitative measure that exists for evaluating an MMA judge—statistical deviation, reversals, consistency in similar situations—he is the most reliably controversial scorer the promotion regularly deploys. This is not opinion. This is documented fact.

Take UFC Vegas 98. D'Amato was the sole dissenting judge in three split decisions on that single card. That is the judging equivalent of throwing three interceptions in one quarter and then being handed the starting assignment for next week. Max Griffin did not mince words after a 2024 fight, literally saying on record that 'Sal D'Amato hates me' and then providing receipts when reporters did the math. It checked out. Sean Strickland's coach has publicly called for D'Amato to be removed from the panel. The Daily Free Press ran a full feature in 2023 with the headline 'Sal D'Amato and the UFC's Judging Problem'—and that was the diplomatic version. The documentation is exhaustive. The evidence is public. The response from regulatory bodies has been consistent and unwavering: they keep giving him fights.

What makes the UFC Winnipeg scorecard particularly frustrating for the grappling community is the specific mismatch it represents. Silva came into that fight as a finisher going up against a stylistically difficult opponent—the kind of matchup where a grappler's usual game gets disrupted. When you build your entire MMA identity on submissions and positional dominance, and you get matched against a high-pace volume striker with solid takedown defense, you are entering a scenario where the back mount you hold for ninety seconds in round two might not register with judges who think a slap to the thigh in the closing seconds means something.

This is the trap modern submission specialists keep walking into. Build a finishing-heavy game. Fight your way into the rankings. Get put in a stylistic nightmare against someone whose entire skill set is designed to prevent your skill set from mattering. Now you are gambling against three people behind a desk who evaluate the fight based on criteria that reward the things you do not do and penalize you for not doing the things you should not be doing anyway. The community has been raising its voice about this for years. The fighters have been explicit about the problem. And nothing changes, because nothing has to change, because the athletic commissions are not actually accountable to the fans, the fighters, or basic standards of competence.

The phrase floating around after this decision was predictable: 'UFC is becoming boxing.' That is the worst possible comparison in mixed martial arts, and it has the uncomfortable distinction of being demonstrably accurate. Boxing spent forty years training audiences to expect that every close fight is a coin flip decided in a room nobody can see. MMA was supposed to fix that problem. The sport was built on the premise that varied techniques and specific scoring criteria would make the right answer obvious. The outcome was supposed to be defensible based on the actual sport being contested.

We are now in an era where the right answer is whatever the panel decides it is, and the panel sometimes includes a guy who has been the loudest dissenting voice in the room for a decade and a half while still receiving regular assignments. The sport has drifted into exactly the situation it was created to escape.

Here is a practical solution that has circulated in fighter and analyst circles for years and deserves resurrection every time something like this surfaces: make judges do post-fight interviews. Walk them out on camera, put a microphone in front of them, ask them to explain their scoring in round two. Not to punish them. To create an actual feedback loop. Right now, the only people in any building with zero obligation to defend their work are the three people whose work decides whether fighters eat that month. Introduce transparency through mandatory post-fight commentary and you do not need to fire anyone. The system will sort itself out organically within a single season.

But that will not happen. It never does. Karine Silva will return to Curitiba and begin the work of rebuilding her ranking from a decision loss that should not have existed. Jasmine Jasudavicius will ride the momentum into the title shot conversation she has earned through her skill and toughness. And Sal D'Amato will appear on the next card, then the one after that, then the one after that. The community will say what it always says. The fighters will express what they always express. The commission will maintain its characteristic silence. And the next time a grappler with a documented finishing record steps into a stylistic scenario that does not produce a finish, everyone will know exactly which name to scan for on the unified scorecards.

The only truly undefeated record in this sport belongs to the person who gets to decide who wins.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Sportskeeda — Sal D'Amato dissents in three UFC Vegas 98 split decisions, fans call for ban
• Sportskeeda — Max Griffin: "Sal D'Amato hates me" after UFC Vegas 86 split decision
• Daily Free Press — Pound-for-Pound: Sal D'Amato and the UFC's judging problem
• Yahoo Sports — Max Griffin takes issue with judge Sal D'Amato's scoring: 'He picks against me every single time'
• Tapology — Jasmine Jasudavicius vs. Karine Silva, UFC Fight Night Winnipeg
• Cageside Press — Karine Silva eyes bounce-back win at UFC Winnipeg