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History · 2008 · UFC 88: Breakthrough · Kurt Pellegrino vs Thiago Tavares
From the tape · 6 Sep 2008

Kurt Pellegrino vs Thiago Tavares

UFC 88: Breakthrough · Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Result

Kurt Pellegrino beat Thiago Tavares

Method
Decision - Unanimous
Round
3 of 3
Clock
5:00
LightweightMain cardReferee · Yves Lavigne

We published no prediction for this bout. Everything on this page is the official record and the tape it was fought on — the result, the round-by-round counts, the judges’ cards where they exist and the sportsbook line where one was published. Our graded calls start in 2026 and live on the public record.

KP
Red corner KurtPellegrino“Batman”Pellegrino MMA · Point Pleasant, New Jersey
VSOn the tape
TT
Blue corner ThiagoTavaresTeam Tavares · Florianopolis, Santa Catarina
Lightweight3 rounds6 Sep 2008
16-7
Record
21-7-1
29
Age
−6 yr23
+1″5' 8"
Height
5' 7"
70″
Reach
70″
Orthodox
Stance
Orthodox
+16
UFC bouts
5
+67%3/3100% of wins
Finishes
1/333% of wins
Pellegrino MMA
Gym
Team Tavares
Point Pleasant, New Jersey
From
Florianopolis, Santa Catarina
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — and the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them.

UFCStats · per round

3 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action⚡ 2 KD Pellegrino
Kurt Pellegrino37 sig landed
HEAD95%35 of 51BODY5%2 of 2LEGS0%0 landed
Thiago Tavares3 sig landed
HEAD100%3 of 11BODY0%0 landedLEGS0%0 landed
37 of 53
Sig.
strikes
3 of 11
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 3
4:07
Control
0:00
2
Knock-
downs
0
0
Sub
attempts
0
Distance 9Clinch 0Ground 28
Where it
happened
Distance 3Clinch 0Ground 0
JudgesNo per-round card for this bout in our decisions source — the judges’ totals are in the scorecards section below.
Round 25:00 of action1 sub attempt
Kurt Pellegrino12 sig landed
HEAD67%8 of 16BODY17%2 of 2LEGS17%2 of 2
Thiago Tavares9 sig landed
HEAD67%6 of 33BODY22%2 of 4LEGS11%1 of 2
12 of 20
Sig.
strikes
9 of 39
0 of 0
Take-
downs
1 of 3
0:00
Control
3:02
0
Knock-
downs
0
1
Sub
attempts
0
Distance 6Clinch 6Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 3Clinch 0Ground 6
JudgesNo per-round card for this bout in our decisions source — the judges’ totals are in the scorecards section below.
Round 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Kurt Pellegrino12 sig landed
HEAD58%7 of 18BODY33%4 of 5LEGS8%1 of 1
Thiago Tavares6 sig landed
HEAD67%4 of 18BODY17%1 of 1LEGS17%1 of 3
12 of 24
Sig.
strikes
6 of 22
1 of 2
Take-
downs
0 of 5
2:14
Control
0:23
0
Knock-
downs
0
0
Sub
attempts
0
Distance 7Clinch 3Ground 2
Where it
happened
Distance 6Clinch 0Ground 0
JudgesNo per-round card for this bout in our decisions source — the judges’ totals are in the scorecards section below.

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

Judges’ scorecards

The judges’ totals, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score.

Official card

Unanimous Decision

Referee · Yves Lavigne
Official totals — Kurt Pellegrino first
JudgeTotal
Doug Crosby2.3 avg spread · 51% wide29–27
Tony Mullinax29–27
Chris Lee2.0 avg spread · 44% wide29–28

There is no per-round card for this bout in our decisions source, so the judges’ totals are all we can show. This one is inside the window our source covers — it is a gap in the record, not a scrape we are waiting on, and nothing here is estimated to fill it.

Media cards — 3 scored, Kurt Pellegrino first · unofficial

MM AWeekly.com29–27
MM AJunkie.com29–27
Sherdog.com29–28

Fan vote · unofficial

29-27 Pellegrino · 67%29-28 Pellegrino · 33%

6 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Takedowns

Takedowns

The level change — head to head

Career UFC takedown rates. Red corner left, blue corner right.

Kurt Pellegrino

2.90takedowns / 15 min
2.90 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
3.83 / 15m
5.37 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
9.12 / 15m
54%
ACCURACY
42%
0.80 / 15m
SUB ATT
1.50 / 15m

Thiago Tavares

3.83takedowns / 15 min

Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on them that they stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average. Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (5.32 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked roster-wide

The market story

Where the price started and where it finished — the sportsbook consensus, with the vig removed. We captured no price series for this bout, so there is no chart to draw.

Kurt Pellegrino↑ +0.9pp
open 28.5%close 29.3%
Thiago Tavares↓ −0.9pp
open 71.5%close 70.7%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

Kurt Pellegrino opened at 28.5% and closed at 29.3% (+0.9pp), with Thiago Tavares moving the other way by the same amount — the two are one de-vigged pair, so they always sum to 100%. There is no line between those two points because nobody recorded one: we hold the open and the close for this bout, not the days in between.

Show the numbers
CornerOpen (US)Close (US)Open %Close %Move
Kurt Pellegrino23523028.5%29.3%+0.9pp
Thiago Tavares-300-27071.5%70.7%−0.9pp
Opening and closing moneylines from BestFightOdds (data/refs/bfo_fighter_moneylines.csv), one row per fighter per bout, de-vigged pairwise so the two corners sum to 100% · scraped 2026-06-10. No price series was captured for this bout, so no line is drawn between the two points.
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