Ultimate Fighter season 12 semifinalist Nam Phan became a brief trend on Twitter last Saturday night after he came out on the losing end of controversial decision regarding his featherweight finale match with fellow contestant Leonard Garcia.
By many accounts, it seemed as if Phan had secured a clear victory over his opponent, with Garcia even appearing to have tapped out in the second round of the match (a surrender overlooked by referee Herb Dean). At the end of the third round, however, two out of three judges ruled in favor of Garcia in a split decision, igniting heated protests from Ultimate Fighting fans across the blogosphere and Twitterverse.
RJ Clifford, editor-in-chief of TapouT Magazine and MMA Worldwide tweeted, “Here is the email address of the NSAC. Contact them if you feel Nam Phan was robbed last night. I know I did. boxing@boxing.nv.gov” in support of Phan, while MiddleEasy shared, “Just posted: “The official statistics provider of the UFC clearly shows that Nam Phan won (http://twitthis.com/n6rcuu ).”
While the results of the fight remain up for scrutiny, Phan might at least find some consolation in knowing that fans have a massive amount of support for him, and that he might be the first Vietnamese-related topic to ever trend on Twitter.
According to twend.it, Nam Phan’s name trended for roughly 45 minutes worldwide. Last I checked, he came in at 7th in the top ten, just below Francisca Valenzuela and right above “Heartbeats.” (Twitter has been operating since 2006, and it didn’t begin listing trending topics until 2009, so between Twitter’s inception in 2006 and Phan’s fight in 2010, there’s a possibility that something else Vietnamese-related might have trended, but I can’t be sure.)
Until the possibility of a rematch gets sorted out, hopefully Phan can enjoy this spurt of support–and the $30,000 bonus he won for nabbing Fight of the Night.
Here’s Phan post-fight interview. You can hear the audience’s dissatisfaction after the announcement of the winner. (There are some punches thrown in the beginning of the video, so if you’re not keen on fighting, might want to fast forward).
VTP contributor Kimberly Truong had the fortune of interviewing Phan in the past, you can read that post here.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.