The Real Winners and Losers from Diaz-Masvidal II Fight Card

It was another Saturday night in combat sports.

While established boxing champion Shakur Stevenson was defending his lightweight title on one side of the country in New Jersey, ex-UFC heroes Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal were dueling again for the hearts of the anti-establishment in southern California.

The one-time "BMF" rivals signed to meet in a boxing ring after lurching toward irrelevance in the octagon, with Diaz running out his contract with the UFC in September 2022 and Masvidal retiring after a loss to Gilbert Burns, his fourth in a row, in March 2023.

Diaz dropped a 10-round ring decision to Jake Paul in the meantime and has veered between calling for a return go-round with Paul or a re-engagement in the cage with two-time rival Conor McGregor, while Masvidal also claims to be considering a return to MMA.

They topped an 11-bout boxing show at the Honda Center in Anaheim and the B/R combat team was in place to take it all in and deliver a real-time list of its definitive winners and losers.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

It's easy to suggest it's all a joke or a farce or whatever.

But whether squared circle purists care to acknowledge or admit it, the main event delivered precisely what it promised—a comprehensively entertaining fight between two perpetually willing combatants, on a night when many real boxers fell flat.

And like it or not, only a fool would suggest otherwise.

One-time MMA foes Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz renewed hostilities in California nearly five years after the first go-round in New York, threw nearly 1,400 combined punches and gave referee Ray Corona nearly nothing to do in terms of peeling them apart.

In the end, one judge saw it a flat-footed draw at five rounds apiece but was overruled by two others who gave Diaz a majority decision win with decisive 97-93 and 98-92 cards.

B/R also nudged it in Diaz's direction, seeing it six rounds to four or 96-94 on points.

"It feels good to get the job done, for sure," said Diaz, who'd lost the first bout when a cage-side physician declared him unfit to continue with cuts around his right eye. "It's always been about respect (with Masvidal). He showed up. He came to fight and so did I."

Not surprisingly, the beaten fighter disagreed with the verdict.

"I thought I won," he said. "I definitely thought I landed more meaningful shots. I might have got hit with some volume, but I was never hurt. You can see that."

Both fighters suggested they'd be willing to do a rematch in the boxing ring, but Diaz also had some other items on his agenda covering both boxing and MMA.

"I'm gonna beat Jake Paul's f--king ass, and I'm down to fight the highest-ranked boxer I can find," he said. "My main objective is to be the best fighter in the world and to go back and get a UFC title. Leon Edwards, Jake Paul, and anyone else. You're dead."

It wasn't a good sign for Daniel Jacobs.

The former two-time middleweight champ's fight with second-generation rival Shane Mosley Jr. was barely nine minutes old when the cliches started flowing.

"Father Time is undefeated," analyst Mauro Ranallo said. "Sometimes the heart and the mind say yes but the body says no, and it's harder and harder to pull the trigger."

Only three of 10 scheduled co-main event rounds had been completed at that point, but the narrative for the 37-year-old never really changed on the way to a desultory unanimous decision loss to his younger and far less accomplished foe.

The judges scored 28 of a possible 30 rounds for Mosley, who never knocked Jacobs down or got him in significant trouble but did open a cut over his left eye in the eighth round with a hard right hand followed by an accidental head butt.

B/R gave him one round.

Mosley, though he's neither held a significant title nor beaten a truly high-profile opponent, was consistently superior thanks to superior aggression, superior work rate and superior precision when compared to Jacobs, who'd not fought in more than two years and claimed he was coming back to secure his legacy and chase a Hall of Fame induction.

Turns out he may have hurt his cause.

"It's not a performance that's going to get you into the Hall of Fame," Ranallo said. "You can tarnish a would-be Hall of Fame induction by getting back into the ring."

Meanwhile, it was a fifth straight win for Mosley, who'd beaten four middling foes since dropping a majority decision to Jason Quigley three years ago in Las Vegas. He said he turned down a title shot at middleweight to climb to 168 pounds for the chance to face a higher-profile opponent in Jacobs, but to say he was impressive would be a stretch.

"He didn't show anything to suggest he's raised his level," analyst Shawn Porter said.

It's the combat sports debate that'll never go away.

Which is superior, boxing or mixed martial arts?

Well, though it didn't provide a definitive answer that'll satisfy anyone, the light heavyweight scrap between Chris Avila and Anthony Pettis did show that a championship-level pedigree in one discipline doesn't transfer to the other.

Pettis was a UFC lightweight champion from 2013 to 2015 but he'd made only one previous ring appearance, a dubious decision over 54-year-old Roy Jones Jr. last year. The absence of a true boxing pedigree was his downfall against fellow former MMA competitor Chris Avila, whose six fights' worth of experience was decisive in a unanimous decision victory.

It wasn't a memorable fight by any measure, but Avila's slight but noticeable edge in hand-to-hand technique earned him a 4-2 nod in rounds from one judge and 5-1 edges from the other two. B/R agreed with the first judge, giving Avila four of the six.

Avila isn't likely to challenge for a title anytime soon, but he was consistent with his work rate and gradually wore down his 37-year-old foe as the fight entered its second half.

"Boxing and MMA are two different sports," analyst Mauro Ranallo said.

"Boxing is a part of MMA training but being a superstar in one doesn't guarantee anything in another. Pettis was light years ahead when it comes to MMA but Avila's experience in a boxing ring is what was decisive tonight."

He earned a few bucks and fought on a pay-per-view main card with mentor Floyd Mayweather Jr. watching proudly from ringside.

But Curmel Moton would've gotten as much competition from a heavy bag.

Russian-born/Brooklyn-based lightweight Nikolai Buzolin had lost four straight coming in and never showed signs of ending the skid, coming up on the wrong end of near constant flurries before eventually succumbing by KO midway through Round 2.

Moton is just 18 years old. And while the overmatched Buzolin was in no way expected to win the fight, the maturity of the performance by the kid was still noticeable.

"I believe some people are just born fighters," analyst Sean O'Malley said, "and this kid is a born fighter. You can tell by his shoulders that he's been throwing punches his whole life. You can tell he's a kid, but he's built like a grown man."

Moton controlled the first round with superior precision and activity and dropped Buzolin with a wicked body shot in the final few seconds. Buzolin rose and lasted to the bell but was immediately in peril in the second and was rescued by referee Jack Reiss after another prolonged barrage at 1:38.

"He had a lot of experience, but I knew I was gonna come out here and handle business," Moton said. "I've had pressure on me my whole life. I've always had that (Mayweather) name on my shoulders. I'm used to it. When they call my name again I'll be here, and I'll put on another good performance."

It would be easy to discuss Sean Garcia's egregious weight miss and older brother Ryan Garcia's erratic pre-fight antics, which drew an "I do hope (he) gets the help he so desperately needs" plea from blow-by-blow man Mauro Ranallo.

But it'd take away from Amado Vargas. And that'd be a mistake.

The son of the former 154-pound champion was a perfect junior welterweight incarnation of his "Ferocious" father, punishing Garcia's body from the opening bell and rarely stepping off the gas before ultimately battering his foe into a sixth-round stoppage.

"I've been ready for this moment," said Vargas, who improved to 11-0. "They've been saying the only good one is the littlest brother. But I've been working on the low. This is a Vargas dynasty. We're here to stay."

Though one-sided in terms of overall volume, the fight remained competitive because of Garcia's strategy of coming off the ropes with flurries, including hard lead right hooks from a southpaw stance that occasionally made Vargas pause.

It veered decisively in Vargas' favor when he dropped Garcia with a right uppercut in the fourth round, and continued at the end of the fifth when Garcia was clearly distressed by a hard shot to the liver that landed just before the bell.

The end came 46 seconds into the sixth, and, though analyst Shawn Porter said the fight should go on because the damage was "not life threatening," Garcia did not complain.

Sean O'Malley is the UFC's "it" guy and its incumbent bantamweight champion.

But if he wants to keep filling down time with commentary, he won't be out of place.

The "Suga" man shared the broadcast table with veteran blow-by-blow man Mauro Ranallo and ex-welterweight boxing champ Shawn Porter and didn't embarrass himself in his maiden voyage, in fact handling the role better for the most part than Porter did.

O'Malley was consistently concise and controlled in his analysis, providing particularly valuable insight on in-round pacing and pre-fight conditioning, and earning a derisive label "Science Guy" from Porter. He didn't hesitate to criticize a fighter either, joining with Ranallo to take Sean Garcia to task for coming in three pounds overweight.

On the other hand, Porter compromised his own professionalism by loudly coaching a fighter to go to the body in the middle of a round and was blatantly wrong when he said Garcia against was coming in after a three-year layoff against Amado Vargas. In reality, it was 217 days.

"This is a lot of fun," O'Malley said. "Watching a boxing fight from this angle is interesting."

It's a good thing Devin Cushing is from Pensacola.

The westernmost city in the Florida panhandle is the hometown of all-time great Roy Jones Jr., which gave the broadcast team of Mauro Ranallo and Shawn Porter something to lean on during his main-card opener with past amateur foe Manny Correa.

Ranallo and Porter repeatedly insisted they saw flashes of Jones in the 27-year-old lightweight's style, which saw him take a wide southpaw stance while holding his lead right hand well below his beltline and firing combination from myriad angles.

Truth told, though, it was a reach of pound-for-pound proportions.

While it's legit to suggest Cushing's isn't a garden-variety approach, to imply that he and Jones have anything in common beyond a zip code bordered on ridiculous, even though he did stay unbeaten with a clear unanimous decision victory.

He took more shots from round to round than Jones typically felt across a full fight, then missed an opportunity to bask in the afterglow when he said in a post-fight interview that he didn't care about fan reactions. That instantly triggered a flow of boos from those who'd been paying attention, to which Cushing responded with a dual middle-finger salute.

"I've been off a long time. I've been off for 15 months," he said. "But I don't have no excuses, though."

Main Card

Nate Diaz def. Jorge Masvidal by majority decision (95-95, 97-93, 98-92)

Shane Mosley Jr. def. Daniel Jacobs by unanimous decision (99-91, 99-91, 100-90)

Chris Avila def. Anthony Pettis by unanimous decision (58-56, 59-55, 59-55)

Curmel Moton def. Nikolai Buzolin by KO, 1:38, Round 2

Amado Vargas def. Sean Garcia by KO, 0:46, Round 6

Devin Cushing def. Manny Correa by unanimous decision (77-75, 78-74, 80-72)

Preliminary Card

Louie Lopez def. Alan Sanchez by unanimous decision (77-75, 77-75, 77-75)

Kenny Lopez Jr. def. Andres Martinez by unanimous decision (59-54, 58-55, 59-54)

Bryce Logan def. Jose Aguayo by KO, 1:20, Round 3

Gabriel Aguilar Costa def. Steven Dunn by KO, 2:50, Round 2

Dan Hernandez def. Luciano Ramos by unanimous decision (39-37, 40-36, 40-36)