Round One
Inside leg kick from Pearson to start as he takes the center of the Octagon. He checks a kick from Guillard.
Guillard staying fairly patient at thi stage looking for his time to pounce. Pearson with a body kick. Pearson gets clipped with a punch, but gets out of the way of another punch coming behind it.
He gets caught again, but seems to be fine and continues marching forward. Guillard lands a knee to the mid-section.
Pearson attempts a flying knee and it leads to Guillard bundling him to the ground. Pearson tries to get back up and Guillard fires off two hard knees.
There’s a moment of confusion as the referee wades in and calls a halt to the action. There’s blood trickling from a cut to Pearson’s forehead, and there’s some doubt about whether the blows were illegal or not since Pearson was still partially on the ground.
It’s difficult to tell even from the replays, but it does look like at least one of the knees landed just as Pearson had placed his hand down on the mat which makes it an illegal blow.
It was so close to being a legal strike though so it’s hard to blame Guillard here.
Still, after some delay the referee’s decided that the fight has to end and so unfortunately this one is going to go down as a co contest due to the illegal strike at 1.57mins of the first round.
