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A unanimous decision (UD) is a winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts and other sports involving striking and submission in which all three judges agree on which fighter won the match.[1]
In boxing, each of the three judges keeps score (round by round) of which fighter they feel is winning (and losing). This only includes landed blows to the head or the body. In MMA, judges look for different criteria such as kicks, take-downs, punches, knees, elbows, cage control, submission attempts, and aggression.[2] A decision is not required to be unanimous for a boxer or mixed martial artist to be given a victory. In the modern era of Olympic boxing, UD is utilized more often than other outcomes, including stoppages.[3] Unanimous decision should not be confused with a majority decision or split decision.
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In the early days of combat fighting, winners were determined only when one party was unable to continue the fight.[4] The National Sporting Club started to promote professional glove fighting. It introduced the use of officials and their capacity to declare the winner of a fight. Officials began using a scoring system to determine the winner of the fight, and this made unanimous decisions a logical outcome.
Any combat sports decision has the potential to be overturned. Some reasons for this may include counting errors, misdeclaration, and retroactive disqualification due to rule violations. There has only been one case of a unanimous decision being overturned, in a 1983 fight between Luis Resto and Billy Collins Jr, where Resto won the fight, but was later revealed to have fought with tampered gloves. The discovery of the tampered gloves turned the Unanimous Decision into a no contest.
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| Date | Winner | Opponent | Notes |
| March 8, 1971 | Joe Frazier | Muhammad Ali | For WBA, WBC, and vacant The Ring heavyweight titles |
| January 28, 1974 | Muhammad Ali | Joe Frazier | Retained NABF heavyweight title |
| March 7, 1987 | Mike Tyson | James Smith | Retained WBC heavyweight title;
Won WBA heavyweight title; Heavyweight unification series |
| June 11, 2009 | Georges St-Pierre | Thiago Alves | Defended the UFC Welterweight Championship. |
| May 2, 2015 | Floyd Mayweather Jr | Manny Pacquiao | Retained WBA (Unified), WBC, and The Ring welterweight titles;
Won WBO welterweight title |
| February 8, 2020 | Jon Jones | Dominick Reyes | Defended the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship. |
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| Date | Winner | Opponent | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 10, 2010 | B.J. Penn | Frankie Edgar | Lost the UFC Lightweight Championship.[5] |
| February 4, 2012 | Carlos Condit | Nick Diaz | Won the interim UFC Welterweight Championship.[5] |
| July 2, 2017 | Jeff Horn | Manny Pacquiao | Lost WBO welterweight title |
| February 12, 2023 | Islam Makhachev | Alexander Volkanovski | Retained UFC lightweight Championship.[6] |
Boxing
- Floyd Mayweather Jr. – 20 wins by UD
- Muhammad Ali – 18 wins by UD
- Manny Pacquiao – 18 wins by UD
- Joe Louis – 9 wins by UD
MMA
- Jon Jones – 9 wins by UD
- Anderson Silva – 9 wins by UD
- Georges St-Pierre – 10 wins by UD
- Kamaru Usman – 9 wins by UD
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