Tapology<\/a> revealed that the undefeated Morales (listed at 19-0, per UFC) actually suffered a loss on the Ecuadorian show Ultima Pelea, the South American country\u2019s version of The Ultimate Fighter. According to Tapology, Morales had one win and one loss on the show, bringing his record to 20-1.<\/p>\nThe news led to widespread controversy on social media, prompting Morales to issue a firm response on Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am going to hit injustice right in the face,\u201d Morales wrote in Spanish. \u201cF*ck you, Tapology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales\u2019 message was accompanied by a laughing emoji and a middle finger emoji.<\/p>\n
According to Tapology, even though the bout was part of a pre-taped television program, \u201cThe rules and structure of the fights meet our criteria of professional MMA.\u201d See their statement below.<\/p>\n
Making matters more confusing is Ultima Pelea\u2019s comparison to TUF. The UFC\u2019s long-running reality competition program has always classified bouts on the show as exhibitions that should not be counted on a fighter\u2019s pro record (one reason for this is to prevent results of the pre-taped show to be leaked before the fights are broadcast). However, there is no clear indication that Ultima Pelea bouts are intended to be viewed as exhibitions.<\/p>\n
The bouts on Ultima Pelea also feature slightly different rules than most fight fans are used to, including the duration being two five-minute rounds, and elbows not being permitted, but this is not unique to the Ecuadorian show and countless pro fighters have bouts with differing rules mixed into their records (Khabib Nurmagomedov being a prominent example).<\/p>\n
Record-keeping site Sherdog also issued a statement in response to the controversy, noting their decision to keep Morales\u2019 record unaltered.<\/p>\n
This kind of discussion isn\u2019t exclusive to events outside of North America, as TUF has also featured fighters losing on the show and continuing to be billed as undefeated. One recent example is Bryce Mitchell, who made his official UFC debut at 9-0 despite being submitted by Brad Katona on their season of TUF in 2018.<\/p>\n
Morales\u2019 undefeated status is of great interest to fans and possibly the UFC\u2019s matchmakers as they decide who should be the next challenger for welterweight champion Islam Makhachev. In his most recent outing, Morales scored a first-round knockout of top contender Sean Brady to improve to 7-0 in the UFC.<\/p>\n
For MMA Fighting\u2019s purposes, Morales will continue to be listed at 19-0 overall.<\/p>\n
You can judge for yourself by checking out Morales\u2019 Ultima Pelea submission loss below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Morales wants to make it clear that his perfect record is legit. On Tuesday, record-keeping website Tapology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-397833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}