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History · 2016 · The Ultimate Fighter: Team Joanna vs. Team Cláudia Finale · John Moraga vs Matheus Nicolau
From the tape · 8 Jul 2016

John Moraga vs Matheus Nicolau

The Ultimate Fighter: Team Joanna vs. Team Cláudia Finale · Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Result

Matheus Nicolau beat John Moraga

Method
Decision - Split
Round
3 of 3
Clock
5:00
FlyweightMain cardReferee · Chris Tognoni

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.

JM
Red corner JohnMoragaPhoenix, Arizona
VSOn the tape
Blue corner MatheusNicolauNova Uniao · Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais
Flyweight3 rounds8 Jul 2016
The story going in
  • Has finished 4 of 5 UFC wins.
  • Carries 46 points more takedown defence than Moraga.
  • 8 UFC bouts deep — 7 more than Nicolau.
19-7
Record
19-6-1
32
Age
−9 yr23
5' 6"
Height
5' 6"
66″
Reach
66″
Orthodox
Stance
Orthodox
+78
UFC bouts
1
4/580% of wins
Finishes
1/1100% of wins
Phoenix, Arizona
From
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais
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
John Moraga11 sig landed
HEAD55%6 of 34BODY0%0 landedLEGS45%5 of 6
Matheus Nicolau12 sig landed
HEAD33%4 of 13BODY33%4 of 8LEGS33%4 of 4
11 of 40
Sig.
strikes
12 of 25
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:00
Control
0:00
Distance 11Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 12Clinch 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 action
John Moraga12 sig landed
HEAD50%6 of 29BODY17%2 of 3LEGS33%4 of 4
Matheus Nicolau19 sig landed
HEAD26%5 of 19BODY32%6 of 8LEGS42%8 of 8
12 of 36
Sig.
strikes
19 of 35
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 0
0:00
Control
0:00
Distance 12Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 19Clinch 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
John Moraga8 sig landed
HEAD88%7 of 32BODY0%0 of 3LEGS12%1 of 2
Matheus Nicolau10 sig landed
HEAD40%4 of 14BODY20%2 of 5LEGS40%4 of 6
8 of 37
Sig.
strikes
10 of 25
0 of 1
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:00
Control
0:43
Distance 8Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 10Clinch 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

Decision - Split

Referee · Chris Tognoni
Official totals — John Moraga first
JudgeTotal
Lester Griffin2.0 avg spread · 47% wide28–29
Jeff Mullen2.1 avg spread · 42% wide29–28
Chris Lee2.0 avg spread · 44% wide28–29

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.

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.

John Moraga

0.62takedowns / 15 min
0.62 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
1.22 / 15m
2.70 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
2.84 / 15m
23%
ACCURACY
43%
1.10 / 15m
SUB ATT
0.80 / 15m

Matheus Nicolau

1.22takedowns / 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 (5.00 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked in Flyweight

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.

John Moraga↓ −9.0pp
open 66.1%close 57.1%
Matheus Nicolau↑ +9.0pp
open 33.9%close 42.9%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

John Moraga opened at 66.1% and closed at 57.1% (−9.0pp), with Matheus Nicolau 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
John Moraga-245-14566.1%57.1%−9.0pp
Matheus Nicolau17512533.9%42.9%+9.0pp
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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