The incident came during the opening round with De La Silva looking for a takedown and Silva trying to find a way to stay on her feet. Just as De La Rosa was about to bring the action down to the canvas, Silva reached out and blatantly grabbed the fence, which forced referee Jerin Valel to spring into action.
He broke the fighters apart, admonished Silva for the foul and immediately issued a point deduction.
The point deduction put Silva into a situation where she had to either finish the fight or dominate in such a fashion to avoid the bad end of the scorecards. Silva definitely reacted to that level of urgency by going after De La Rosa with a blitzing series of strikes that started to turn the momentum to her favor.
That was until De La Rosa was able to drag the action back down to the ground where she began chipping away at Silva with short elbows and punches from the top. De La Rosa also looked for a late arm-triangle choke that forced Silva to play defense off her back.
With De La Rosa trying to rely on her grappling, Silva was attempting to hurt her with every shot thrown even as the former Ultimate Fighter closed the distance. Silva blasted De La Rosa with a short shot against the cage that opened up her nose like a faucet as blood just began pouring out.
While she was definitely eating a lot of strikes, De La Rosa kept looking for the takedown and she finally landed it just before the end of the final round. That wasn’t enough to sway the round in her favor, which was reflected by the judges with one official scoring the fight 28-27 for Silva and the other two returning 28-28 scorecards, which meant the fight was declared a majority draw.
Both Silva and De La Rosa will now look to return to the win column thanks to a disappointing end to the fight at UFC Vegas 20.
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