Nocturnal 
Two UFC bantamweights who’d spent months bad-mouthing each other finally settled it in the cage this weekend – and the result has left fans furious with the judges rather than the fighters.
Norma Dumont and Ailin Perez met in the co-main event of UFC Vegas 121 at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, capping off a genuinely personal feud that had been simmering since the summer. Perez took the fight by split decision, with judges scoring it 29-28 in her favour after three rounds.
How the feud started
The bad blood didn’t come from anything that happened in training camp or during a staredown. According to Perez, she confronted Dumont at the UFC Performance Institute after an alleged run-in, while Perez had also aimed comments at Dumont’s boyfriend and fellow UFC fighter Marco Tulio, claiming on social media that Dumont had to “distract” him from watching her train.
Dumont hit back hard when she spoke to MMA Fighting ahead of the bout, accusing Perez of secretly filming Tulio on multiple occasions. “She’s already secretly filmed me three times,” Dumont said. “She has mental problems… she has this little game of trying to get people worked up.”
Dumont made clear just how personal things had become, telling the outlet: “It’s a fight that literally has a personal anger, a personal issue, that the two of us have against each other.” She added that once the contract was signed, she had her date “to do what I want to do without getting arrested” – a line that’s since taken off as the headline moment of the build-up.
Tulio also weighed in publicly, branding Perez’s promotional tactics “bad for the sport” and accusing her of “begging for attention”. Perez, for her part, has never shied away from needling opponents before a fight.
A flat fight and a contested verdict
For all the fire beforehand, the actual contest was widely described as a slow burn. As MMA Junkie put it, the co-main event “fizzled out at the end” after 15 minutes that saw both women picking their shots rather than looking for a finish. Perez leaned on leg kicks and straight punches, with Dumont answering in kind, but neither fighter ever really stepped on the gas.
That made the scorecards all the more contentious. When Perez was awarded the win 29-28, plenty of fans online accused the judges of getting it badly wrong, with EssentiallySports reporting a wave of “robbery” claims and one fan writing that “every book had Dumont as a huge favourite going into the decision”. Betting markets ahead of the fight had also generally favoured Dumont, adding fuel to the argument.
Others were simply unimpressed by the fight itself, with some social media users pointing out that the trash talk beforehand promised far more action than either woman delivered once the cage door shut.
What happens now
For Perez, the win extends what has been described as the best run of her UFC career, with the Argentine having strung together a lengthy unbeaten streak and sitting among the division’s top contenders. She’s previously spoken of wanting a shot at the bantamweight title.
Dumont, meanwhile, has also been eyeing a route towards a title fight against names like Kayla Harrison or Amanda Nunes, and this defeat is likely to be a setback rather than a knockout blow to those ambitions. Whether the two rivals have anything left to say to each other, or whether the feud ends here, remains to be seen.
