This Saturday Hooker vs Parnasse · Accor Arena Paris France See this week's picks →
History · 2009 · UFC 98: Evans vs Machida · Matt Hughes vs Matt Serra
From the tape · 23 May 2009

Matt Hughes vs Matt Serra

UFC 98: Evans vs Machida · Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Result

Matt Hughes beat Matt Serra

Method
Decision - Unanimous
Round
3 of 3
Clock
5:00
WelterweightCo-MainReferee · Steve Mazzagatti

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.

MH
Red corner MattHughesHIT Squad · Hillsboro, Illinois
VSOn the tape
MS
Blue corner MattSerra“The Terra”Serra-Longo Fight Team · Long Island, New York
Welterweight3 rounds23 May 2009
The story going in
  • Has dropped 2 straight in the UFC.
  • Has finished 2 of 6 UFC wins.
  • Has finished 11 of 15 UFC wins.
45-9
Record
11-7
35
Age
−1 yr34
+3″5' 9"
Height
5' 6"
+5″73″
Reach
68″
Switch
Stance
Orthodox
+920
UFC bouts
11
+40%11/1573% of wins
Finishes
2/633% of wins
HIT Squad
Gym
Serra-Longo Fight Team
Hillsboro, Illinois
From
Long Island, New York
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⚡ 1 KD Serra
Matt Hughes10 sig landed
HEAD30%3 of 16BODY50%5 of 5LEGS20%2 of 3
Matt Serra5 sig landed
HEAD60%3 of 11BODY20%1 of 5LEGS20%1 of 1
10 of 24
Sig.
strikes
5 of 17
1 of 3
Take-
downs
0 of 0
2:04
Control
0:09
0
Knock-
downs
1
Distance 4Clinch 5Ground 1
Where it
happened
Distance 4Clinch 1Ground 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 action
Matt Hughes21 sig landed
HEAD38%8 of 12BODY62%13 of 13LEGS0%0 landed
Matt Serra3 sig landed
HEAD67%2 of 8BODY33%1 of 3LEGS0%0 landed
21 of 25
Sig.
strikes
3 of 11
1 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 0
3:41
Control
0:00
0
Knock-
downs
0
Distance 4Clinch 0Ground 17
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 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Matt Hughes3 sig landed
HEAD100%3 of 9BODY0%0 landedLEGS0%0 landed
Matt Serra6 sig landed
HEAD67%4 of 9BODY17%1 of 3LEGS17%1 of 1
3 of 9
Sig.
strikes
6 of 13
1 of 1
Take-
downs
1 of 1
2:32
Control
0:44
0
Knock-
downs
0
Distance 3Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 3Clinch 0Ground 3
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 · Steve Mazzagatti
Official totals — Matt Hughes first
JudgeTotal
Tony Weeks2.1 avg spread · 49% wide29–28
Jeff Collins1.8 avg spread · 42% wide29–28
Lester Griffin2.0 avg spread · 47% 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 — 6 scored, Matt Hughes first · unofficial

Jordan Breen Sherdog.com30–28
MM AJunkie.com29–28
TJ DeSantis Sherdog.com29–28
MM AWeekly.com29–28
Fight Metric.com29–29
Mike Fridley Sherdog.com28–29

Fan vote · unofficial

29-28 Serra · 58%29-28 Hughes · 22%30-27 Hughes · 10%30-27 Serra · 3%

78 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.

Matt Hughes

2.95takedowns / 15 min
2.95 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
2.05 / 15m
5.90 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
10.25 / 15m
50%
ACCURACY
20%
1.20 / 15m
SUB ATT
0.90 / 15m

Matt Serra

2.05takedowns / 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 (4.97 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked in Welterweight

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.

Matt Hughes↑ +6.6pp
open 64.8%close 71.5%
Matt Serra↓ −6.6pp
open 35.2%close 28.5%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

Matt Hughes opened at 64.8% and closed at 71.5% (+6.6pp), with Matt Serra 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
Matt Hughes-215-26564.8%71.5%+6.6pp
Matt Serra17024535.2%28.5%−6.6pp
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.
← Every fighter on the record