I respectfully but strongly disagree. I see it as similar to the TJ/Cory fight. Obviously the scale of damage is less but the principle is the same. The more active/aggressive fighter did less damage. Mamedov significantly oustruck Primus, and people will say that "none of the blows were devastating", which is true, but nothing that Primus hit with was devastating either, and if you took the force in newtons of all of Mamedov's successful strikes vs. all of Primus' successful strikes, and the force of all Mamedov's successful strikes to the head vs. Primus' strikes to the head, Primus absorbed more force in newtons than Mamedov. And while both numbers would be low compared to say other fights, they wouldn't be close to each other as a percentage. Not only did he do more damage, he did what I'd consider to be more preferable damage. As in if you had me choose which I prefer between getting hit in the head 50 times but only by "arm-strength" punches or having someone fail to submit my arm, and not come particularly close at that, I think we'd all choose damage to the arm and not the head.
Big John often speaks about how the criteria should be damage, he even had Cory winning the TJ fight. Well if the criteria is damage then Mamedov won the fight. A week ago, everyone in the UFC board was complaining that TJ shouldn't be rewarded for just being aggressive, walking forward but swinging and missing. That actually Cory won the fight because he did more damage. A failed submission is not fundamentally different from a missed strike or a failed takedown. Even if we give it any value it has to be tremendously minimal value. It's an inherent problem with submissions right now, they're high risk low reward. I don't think the answer is changing the scoring criteria so that some energetic humping of an arm is worth more than the 17-7 punch count or the 26-15 strike count, this is without mentioning the successful takedowns at all...
