sweet pancake mama! i never saw this rope pull before.
was this before the fedor rope pull or after?
IIRC it was one of the main arguments against Orcus on the megathread that arose on the UG after the fight.
It raises some complicated issues. One is that fights in real-time often involve fouls that a ref doesn't catch. A ref can't always catch everything, and this is just part of the fight game. You can't cry about this stuff---fouls go unpunished in every sport. In this case, though,
both guys' rope grabs/leans (pick a verb) were unpunished. The ref might have warned Fedor about his, but he let the action continue with minimal interference.
Now, some will make the argument that Matt's rope grab was inconsequential, whereas Fedor's was fight-altering. Therefore, Fedor should have been penalized, but Matt should not have. But we surely can't make consistently sound judgments based on this kind of reasoning. For one, a foul is a foul, and no foul as described in any ruleset is meant to apply only to "fight-altering" fouls.
At any rate, the question here IMO comes down to whether you think the fouls in this fight cancel out (with due deference to Zeph, and anyone else who thinks there were no fouls). I'm not entirely sure how to sort this out. I tend to think that Fedor's fouls were more numerous and so Fedor was the worst offender, so for that reason, they can't cancel out. But my ultimate judgment bypasses this. More fouls just add to my dissatisfaction with the fight. And as I've said, I'm not trying so much to determine the final truth of the matter in this fight. I just think that it arose enough dissatisfaction in fans to warrant inclusion in a class of fights that are in the end at least somewhat unsatisfactory, despite ending by finish.