Controversy

Garcia vs. Phan 1 Scorecard: Did Leonard Garcia Really Beat Nam Phan?

Phan landed 102 significant strikes to 64, won the second round by every account and swept all five media scorecards. Two judges still gave the fight to Garcia.

By Jashan Oct 23, 2026 · 8 min read

At a glance

ResultGarcia by split decision - 29-28, 29-28, 27-30; referee Herb Dean
The judgesAdalaide Byrd and Tony Weeks for Garcia, Junichiro Kamijo 30-27 for Phan
The statsSignificant strikes 102-64 to Phan; Garcia threw 282 and landed 23%
The mediaAll 5 media scorecards on MMADecisions had Phan winning, 3 of them 30-27
The bonusFight of the Night, $30,000 each - and Phan was paid his win bonus anyway
Our card30-27 Phan

What was at stake

No title was on the line, but the fight had its own small place in history. Sherdog calls it the first televised featherweight bout in UFC history, and Lowkick and MMAmania the first live one. Other featherweight bouts were on the preliminary card that night, so it was not the first UFC featherweight bout of all.

Leonard Garcia was coming over from the WEC, known for wild, swinging fights. His last two bouts were both split decisions. In April 2010 at WEC 48 he beat Chan Sung Jung, "The Korean Zombie", in a fight that won Fight of the Night and whose decision was booed, according to Sherdog. In September 2010 at WEC 51 he lost one to Mark Hominick, which his Sherdog record also shows.

Nam Phan had just been on The Ultimate Fighter 12, on Team Koscheck, and reached the semifinals, where he lost a split decision to Michael Johnson, according to his Sherdog record and UFC.com. He had fought at lightweight on the show and dropped to featherweight for this, his official UFC debut, which UFC.com and Bleacher Report both report.

The official scorecards

Each judge's rounds, from MMADecisions. Sherdog's reporting confirms that Byrd and Weeks gave Garcia the first round and that Kamijo gave Phan all three, and the official ufcstats record lists the same three totals. Scores are written Garcia first.

Judge	R1	R2	R3	Total	Winner on the card
Adalaide Byrd	10-9	9-10	10-9	29-28	Garcia
Tony Weeks	10-9	9-10	10-9	29-28	Garcia
Junichiro Kamijo	9-10	9-10	9-10	27-30	Phan

Referee: Herb Dean. Sherdog, UFC.com and Lowkick all report the same split, 29-28, 29-28 and 30-27.

All three judges gave Phan the second round. The fight turned on rounds one and three, and Byrd and Weeks gave both to Garcia. The crowd booed the decision, which UFC.com, Sherdog and MMAmania all report.

Round by round

Round 1 - Garcia on two cards

Accounts of the first round disagree, and that is where the argument starts. UFC.com's Thomas Gerbasi wrote that the pace was fast and that "Phan began to land with more frequency in the final 90 seconds", and two Sherdog pieces score the round for Phan. Sherdog's main-card analysis has Garcia winning the stand-up early and the round even by the end, and Bleacher Report's Adam Wells called it "basically an even round". Every account agrees on the pattern: Garcia threw wild, looping punches, and Phan landed the cleaner combinations. The official numbers fit a close round that Phan edged: he landed 33 of 71 significant strikes to Garcia's 30 of 111, and 23 to the head against 18. Neither man had a takedown.

Round 2 - Phan on all three cards

Garcia came out aggressive and took Phan down, which UFC.com, Sherdog and MMAmania all report. Phan took over from there. He hurt Garcia with punches, and a kick to the body put Garcia down: Sherdog's awards piece calls it a side kick to the ribs and Lowkick a kick that grounded him. The official statistics do not count it as a knockdown. Phan then took Garcia's back and went for a rear-naked choke until the bell. The numbers were one-sided: 34 significant strikes to 13, 30 to the head against 8, 2:27 of control against 0:20, and the fight's only submission attempt. Garcia's takedown was his best moment.

Round 3 - Garcia on two cards

Sherdog's year-end awards piece calls the last round the fight's closest. Garcia came out swinging, as Sherdog's analysis puts it, "with guns blazing", and then tired. He took Phan down once more and Phan stood straight back up, which MMAmania and Lowkick both report. "In the final stages of the bout, Garcia was gassed, but still throwing, and Phan still looked fresh," UFC.com wrote. Phan finished with a cut on his face; UFC.com and Sherdog put it down to Garcia's punches, while Phan told Sherdog it came from Garcia's shots knocking his own glove into his head. The official count gives Phan the round on strikes, 35 significant strikes to 21, and Garcia the wrestling: one takedown from two attempts and 0:36 of control against 0:06. Garcia landed 21 of the 125 significant strikes he threw in the round.

What the numbers say

The official statistics, round by round (Garcia first):

Round	Sig. strikes	Total strikes	Head	Body	Ground	Takedowns	Control
R1	30 – 33	30 – 33	18 – 23	6 – 6	0 – 0	0/0 – 0/0	0:00 – 0:08
R2	13 – 34	18 – 45	8 – 30	4 – 3	0 – 4	1/1 – 0/0	0:20 – 2:27
R3	21 – 35	22 – 38	14 – 27	6 – 8	0 – 2	1/2 – 0/0	0:36 – 0:06
Total	64 – 102	70 – 116	40 – 80	16 – 17	0 – 6	2/3 – 0/0	0:56 – 2:41

Phan out-landed Garcia in every round and landed twice as many strikes to the head over the fight, 80 to 40. The gap in accuracy is the story: Phan landed 102 of the 227 significant strikes he threw, 45%, and Garcia 64 of 282, 23%. Sherdog reports the same 102-64 count, citing FightMetric, and the same 282 attempts by Garcia.

Garcia's case rests on what the strike count does not measure: he threw far more, never stopped throwing even when tired, and had both of the fight's takedowns. He said as much himself. "I've worked my style into a judge-favoring position. It makes sense to me not to ever sit back, not to ever wait on the guy to do something. I always try to push forward, and I always try to finish the fight with punches," he told Sherdog. What the numbers cannot show is how Garcia's output looked to a judge sitting at the cage. On the evidence of the strikes that landed, it did far less than it looked.

The media had no doubt. All five media scorecards collected by MMADecisions had Phan winning: three of them 30-27, one 29-27 and one 29-28. Of the 78 fans who scored it on the same site, 70.5% gave it to Phan 30-27.

How we scored it

Round	MMA.SOCIAL	Why
R1	10-9 Phan	Close. Garcia threw 111 significant strikes to 71, but Phan landed more of them, 33 to 30, and finished the round the stronger man.
R2	10-9 Phan	He hurt Garcia, dropped him with a kick to the body, took his back and chased the choke: 34-13 in significant strikes and 2:27 of control.
R3	10-9 Phan	Garcia's takedown and early burst against a tired finish: Phan landed 35 significant strikes to 21 and was the fresher fighter at the end.
Total	30-27 Phan

Our card matches Kamijo's. The first round is the only one we would call genuinely close, and even there the strikes that landed favoured Phan. We stop at 10-9 in the second: it was Phan's clearest round, but Garcia started it with a takedown and got to the bell.

The third is where the two Garcia cards are hardest to follow. Garcia's takedown was real, and he kept swinging when he was exhausted. But Phan stood straight up from it and landed more, and cleaner, for the rest of the round. Giving Garcia that round means valuing the punches he threw over the ones that landed.

What happened next

Phan could not understand it. "I don't know what they were looking at," he said, according to UFC.com. "I thought I won all three rounds." He later told Sherdog: "I don't see how Leonard beat me any of the rounds." Garcia was not celebrating. "I wasn't happy with my performance. Nobody likes to win a fight like that. It was a bittersweet thing, and it felt like I had a lot of questions to answer," he told Sherdog. Accounts differ on how far he went: Sherdog's analysis says he agreed he had lost, while MMA Rising reported that he believed he had done enough. Both men were given Fight of the Night, $30,000 each, according to Sherdog and UFC.com.

The broadcast was harder on the judges. Joe Rogan attacked the scoring live on air, which Sherdog and Bleacher Report both report; "It's ruining MMA," he said, as Sherdog quotes him. And Phan was paid his win bonus anyway. UFC.com says he "still received his win bonus", and Fox Sports and Bleacher Report both report that Dana White was the one who gave it to him.

The rematch took ten months. It was first set for UFC Fight Night 24 on March 26, 2011, but Phan withdrew injured and Chan Sung Jung took his place, submitting Garcia with a twister at 4:59 of the second round, according to Sherdog. Phan lost a unanimous decision to Mike Brown at UFC 133 that August. They finally met again at UFC 136 on October 8, 2011, and this time Phan got the decision: he won it unanimously, 29-28 on all three cards, according to UFC.com and MMADecisions, even though Garcia dropped him with a left hook in the third round. It won Fight of the Night again. "I feel that I beat him twice already," Phan told Sherdog afterwards.

Neither man's UFC career went much further. The first Phan fight turned out to be Garcia's last win in the UFC, which Sherdog and Sports Illustrated both note: he lost to Matt Grice, to Max Holloway by split decision at UFC 155 and to Cody McKenzie at UFC 159, and was released. Phan beat Cole Miller by split decision in 2012 but lost his other UFC fights after the rematch, to Jimy Hettes, Dennis Siver, Takeya Mizugaki and Vaughan Lee, according to his Sherdog record.

The decision itself stands as a Garcia win. Sherdog named it its 2010 Robbery of the Year and in 2013 put it first in its Top 10 of the worst decisions, and in 2012 Bleacher Report ranked it fifth among the most controversial UFC decisions in recent memory.

The verdict

Garcia vs. Phan 1 went to the wrong man, and it is not a close call. Phan landed more significant strikes in every round, won the second clearly on every card, and swept all five media scorecards on MMADecisions. The first round was close enough to argue about; the third was not, unless volume counts for more than accuracy. Garcia threw 282 significant strikes and landed 64. Two judges scored what he threw. The other judge, the media and the official statistics scored what landed, and on that count Phan won 30-27.

Full fight stats: Garcia vs. Phan. The rest of the night: The Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale. More: the fighters with the most split decisions, the most disputed losses and the most decisions.

Sources

Questions

Who won Leonard Garcia vs. Nam Phan?

Leonard Garcia, by split decision at The Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale on December 4, 2010. Adalaide Byrd and Tony Weeks scored it 29-28 for Garcia and Junichiro Kamijo scored it 30-27 for Phan. Phan won the rematch at UFC 136 by unanimous decision.

What was the Garcia vs. Phan scorecard?

Two cards of 29-28 for Garcia and one of 30-27 for Phan. Byrd and Weeks gave Garcia the first and third rounds and Phan the second; Kamijo gave Phan all three rounds.

Was Garcia vs. Phan a robbery?

We scored it 30-27 for Phan, as did three of the five media scorecards on MMADecisions; the other two also had Phan winning. Phan landed 102 significant strikes to 64. Sherdog named it its Robbery of the Year for 2010.

Did Nam Phan get his win bonus?

Yes. UFC.com reports that Phan still received his win bonus despite the loss, and Fox Sports and Bleacher Report report that Dana White gave it to him. Both fighters also received $30,000 for Fight of the Night.

Did Garcia and Phan fight again?

Yes, at UFC 136 on October 8, 2011. Phan won by unanimous decision, 29-28 on all three cards, and the fight again won Fight of the Night. An earlier rematch planned for March 2011 fell through when Phan was injured.

Who landed more strikes in Garcia vs. Phan?

Phan, by a distance. The official statistics have him landing 102 significant strikes to Garcia's 64, and 116 total strikes to 70. Garcia threw more, 282 significant strikes to 227, but landed only 23% of them.