The winner was clear. The disputed margin came down to Rounds 1 and 5.

Gregory Rodrigues defeated Anthony Hernandez by unanimous decision over five rounds. The totals—48-47, 49-46 and 48-47—did not reflect disagreement over the winner. They reflected two different swing-round judgments: Derek Cleary gave Hernandez Round 5, Ron McCarthy gave him Round 1, and Chris Leben awarded both rounds to Rodrigues. All three gave Hernandez Round 3 and Rodrigues Rounds 2 and 4, according to the published round-by-round scorecard listing.

That distinction explains why the scorecards could look narrow beside reports of Rodrigues’ striking advantage. Judges score each round independently. A large fight-wide advantage does not produce extra points unless the work within a particular round supports a 10-8 rather than an ordinary 10-9.

The short answer: two judges gave Hernandez a second round

The official UFC Sacramento result was a unanimous-decision victory for Rodrigues, with scores of 48-47, 49-46 and 48-47. Every judge selected Rodrigues.

Only two cards were one round apart. Cleary and McCarthy each had Rodrigues winning three rounds to two, producing their 48-47 totals. Leben had Rodrigues winning four rounds to one, producing the wider 49-46 card.

“Unanimous decision” answers a limited question: Did all three judges choose the same winner? It does not mean they agreed on every round, and it does not mean every card showed a wide margin.

The common ground among the judges was substantial:

• All three awarded Rodrigues Rounds 2 and 4.
• All three awarded Hernandez Round 3.
• Cleary gave Hernandez one additional round: Round 5.
• McCarthy gave Hernandez a different additional round: Round 1.
• Leben awarded both swing rounds to Rodrigues.

The debate is therefore about how wide Rodrigues’ victory should have been. It is not evidence that the panel was divided over who won.

That also prevents a common misreading of the totals. Two 48-47 cards can look like matching judgments, but these two judges reached that score by different routes. Cleary preferred Rodrigues in Rounds 1, 2 and 4. McCarthy preferred him in Rounds 2, 4 and 5. Their agreement was on the three consensus rounds, not on the two competitive ones.

Official scorecards, round by round

The signed official scorecards published by UFC identify Derek Cleary, Chris Leben and Ron McCarthy as the judges. That primary record takes precedence over the conflicting secondary report that named Chris Lee.

Judge	Round allocation, R1–R5	Total	Winner
Derek Cleary	Rodrigues, Rodrigues, Hernandez, Rodrigues, Hernandez	48-47	Rodrigues
Chris Leben	Rodrigues, Rodrigues, Hernandez, Rodrigues, Rodrigues	49-46	Rodrigues
Ron McCarthy	Hernandez, Rodrigues, Hernandez, Rodrigues, Rodrigues	48-47	Rodrigues

The stable portion of the decision is visible in the middle rounds. Rodrigues swept Rounds 2 and 4 across the panel, while Hernandez swept Round 3. No other round changed hands unanimously.

Round 1 split two judges to one for Rodrigues. Cleary and Leben gave him the round, while McCarthy preferred Hernandez. Round 5 produced the inverse pattern: Leben and McCarthy scored it for Rodrigues, while Cleary awarded it to Hernandez.

Leben’s 49-46 card effectively joined the majority judgment in each swing round. He agreed with Cleary on Round 1 and with McCarthy on Round 5. The two judges who submitted 48-47 cards each departed from that four-round view once, but in different places.

Every round on all three cards was scored 10-9. That matters because the final arithmetic contains no adjustment for the size of Rodrigues’ advantage within any round. The official panel treated Round 2, for example, as a Rodrigues round but not as a 10-8.

The signed cards establish who received each round and the points awarded. They do not contain written explanations. As a result, they cannot establish which exchange caused McCarthy to favor Hernandez in Round 1 or which part of Round 5 persuaded Cleary.

That is the boundary of the official record available here: the allocation is known, but the judges’ reasoning is not. Any attempt to reconstruct their thinking from cumulative statistics or a reporter’s play-by-play remains interpretation rather than documented explanation.

Why a 174-90 strike count does not produce an automatic score

EssentiallySports reported that Rodrigues led 174-90 in significant strikes. That figure should remain attributed to the outlet: the evidence reviewed for this article does not verify it through an official bout-statistics page.

Even if the count is accurate, it cannot be converted directly into a scorecard. The reported total combines five rounds, whereas each judge scores those rounds separately.

Suppose Fighter A wins one round emphatically—but not by enough to receive a 10-8—and takes two other rounds narrowly. Fighter B narrowly wins the remaining two. The scores could look like this:

• Fighter A: 10-9, 10-9, 9-10, 10-9, 9-10
• Fighter B: 9-10, 9-10, 10-9, 9-10, 10-9
• Final score: 48-47 for Fighter A

Fighter A might finish with a major advantage in total strikes or overall damage. The score would still be only 48-47 because three ordinary 10-9 rounds add up the same whether they were close, clear or nearly dominant.

This is scorecard compression. The 10-point must system records rounds won and the degree of any exceptional margin; it does not preserve every difference in output. If one fighter lands heavily throughout a round but receives a 10-9, that round contributes the same one-point margin as a narrow 10-9 elsewhere.

Distribution therefore matters as much as accumulation. A fighter could build most of a large strike advantage in two decisive rounds, lose another round through effective grappling and contest the remaining rounds closely. The cumulative total would describe the fight as a whole without revealing how many individual rounds each judge should award.

Raw volume is not the complete scoring test either. The Association of Boxing Commissions’ August 2025 Unified Rules document places effective striking and effective grappling first in the scoring hierarchy, ahead of effective aggression and fighting-area control. The document describes the general rules framework, but the evidence reviewed here does not establish that this exact revision was the version California applied at the event.

The detailed Unified Rules guidance evaluates legal blows through their immediate and cumulative impact, with immediate impact receiving greater weight. It treats effective aggression as a fallback when effective striking and grappling are equal, while fighting-area control is considered only when the higher-priority criteria remain even. It also allows a 10-9 to cover anything from a very close round to marginal domination under the round-scoring framework.

That hierarchy does not make strike counts irrelevant. Landed strikes can be evidence of effective offense, particularly when they produce visible impact. It means only that judges are not instructed to count techniques mechanically or score the bout by its final aggregate.

The reported 174-90 figure may help explain why many observers thought Rodrigues’ margin should have been wider. By itself, however, it does not show how the strikes were divided among the five rounds, how much immediate impact they had, or how they compared with Hernandez’s effective grappling in a particular round.

Nor do the two 48-47 cards mean the judges considered the fighters’ overall offense nearly equal. Cleary and McCarthy each gave Rodrigues three rounds. They simply identified a different second round for Hernandez in addition to the third.

What each fighter actually accomplished

Rodrigues’ reported offense gives context to the criticism of the narrow cards. Yahoo Sports reported four knockdowns, including three associated with low kicks in Round 2, and said Rodrigues defended 26 of Hernandez’s 29 takedown attempts. Those are third-party reported figures rather than complete official round-by-round statistics.

UFC’s account described Rodrigues attacking Hernandez’s lead leg in Round 2 and controlling much of the fight through striking before Hernandez rallied in the third. That broad account corresponds with the unanimous official treatment of those rounds: every judge awarded Rodrigues Round 2 and Hernandez Round 3.

Yahoo’s report described Hernandez’s clearest success in more detail. It said he secured an early takedown in Round 3 and spent nearly four minutes controlling Rodrigues on the mat. That does not disclose every scoring action in the round, but it provides a reported basis for the one Hernandez round on which the entire panel agreed.

Several distinctions are necessary when translating those accomplishments into judging terms.

First, defended takedowns do not earn affirmative scoring credit by themselves. A judge does not add points to Rodrigues’ side each time Hernandez fails to complete an attempt. The defense can still shape a round indirectly: stopping the takedown may prevent Hernandez from establishing an attack, reaching an advantageous position, creating a submission threat or producing damaging offense.

That difference separates defense from effective offense. Rodrigues’ takedown defense could keep Hernandez from building a grappling advantage while leaving the round to be decided by the effective striking and grappling that did occur.

Second, control time is relevant through the effective work associated with it, not because duration or position automatically wins a round. The scoring guidance assesses takedowns through the attack they establish and evaluates top or bottom position through the effective result of the fighter’s actions. Hernandez’s nearly four minutes of reported Round 3 control is therefore context for his grappling success, not an independent formula that guarantees the round.

In this case, all three official judges did award Hernandez Round 3. The scorecards show unanimity on the result of that round, but they do not explain which parts of his ground work carried the most weight.

Third, knockdowns are strong evidence of striking impact, but no fixed rule converts each knockdown into a particular score. A 10-8 depends on the overall margin and the relevant scoring factors across the round. Multiple knockdowns can support that assessment without automatically requiring it.

Yahoo’s live scorer awarded Rodrigues Rounds 1, 2, 4 and 5, made Round 2 a 10-8 and arrived at an unofficial 49-45. That was one observer’s interpretation. All three official judges awarded Rodrigues the second round but scored it 10-9, so none of the official totals included a 10-8.

The disagreement over Round 2 is separate from the disagreement over Rounds 1 and 5. A scorer could believe Rodrigues won four rounds but still use 49-46, or believe the second round was sufficiently wide for a 10-8 and reach 49-45. The official panel unanimously chose the ordinary 10-9 treatment.

The cited records reviewed for this article do not provide complete verified round-by-round striking statistics or direct explanations from the judges. They establish Rodrigues’ reported strengths, Hernandez’s clearest reported grappling success and the official round allocations. They do not establish precisely why McCarthy selected Hernandez in Round 1 or Cleary selected him in Round 5.

That limitation is especially important for the fifth. A fight-wide total may be heavily influenced by earlier action, while a fifth-round score must be based on the fifth round alone. Evidence that Rodrigues did more over 25 minutes cannot, without round-level distribution and impact, resolve a close final-round judgment by itself.

The media saw a wider win, but not a different winner

All 13 media scores collected in the MMA Decisions listing favored Rodrigues. Eleven were 49-46 and two were 48-47. No listed scorer selected Hernandez, but the sample differed over whether Rodrigues’ margin was three points or one.

That distribution broadly supports a four-round interpretation. It also explains the attention directed at Cleary’s and McCarthy’s cards: most scorers in the listed sample did not find a second round for Hernandez.

The individual round selections available from major live coverage reinforce that pattern. MMA Fighting scored Rodrigues in Rounds 1, 2, 4 and 5 and Hernandez in Round 3. Its live account nevertheless described Round 5 as close, illustrating how a scorer can reach 49-46 without treating every Rodrigues round as decisive.

The published Sherdog scoring followed the same round pattern: its three scorers awarded Rodrigues Rounds 1, 2, 4 and 5 and Hernandez Round 3, each producing a 49-46 card.

Those media cards match Leben’s official allocation. They differ from Cleary on Round 5 and from McCarthy on Round 1.

Media consensus is useful context, not an appellate ruling. It supports describing Rodrigues as the clear winner and shows that the most common listed score was wider than two of the official cards. It does not prove that an official judge necessarily scored a competitive round incorrectly.

There are also two distinct margin debates. The first is whether Rodrigues won four rounds rather than three. The second is whether his Round 2 advantage warranted a 10-8. Most listed media scorers answered the first question in Rodrigues’ favor while still reaching 49-46. Yahoo’s live scorer went further by awarding four rounds and using a 10-8 in the second for 49-45. No official judge did so.

The supported conclusion is narrower than the most heated reaction to the decision. All three judges selected Rodrigues. They unanimously gave him Rounds 2 and 4, and they unanimously gave Hernandez Round 3. The two 48-47 cards resulted from separate judgments in the swing rounds: Cleary added Round 5 to Hernandez’s side, while McCarthy added Round 1.

Rodrigues’ reported striking volume, knockdowns and takedown defense make the wider media view understandable. But cumulative numbers cannot establish the correct score of an individual round without showing how the offense was distributed and evaluated. The available record supports scrutiny of the margin, not a claim of robbery, corruption or uncertainty about the rightful winner.