Rewatching round 3-5,
Round 3 is extremely close. Volkanovski landed some good jabs and some pitter patter leg kicks. Max landed some body shots and some pitter patter leg kicks of his own. Also curiously, the live stats said Max outstruck Volkanovski 25-22 and that was changed to 28-24 Max after the 4th round. Honestly, I think Volkanovski may have landed slightly more, but I think that is closer to the truth than what the stats say now. It was basically even. In that case, I think I would give it to Max since he controlled the center of the cage for the majority of the round. Easily a case for Volkanovski, though.
Round 4 is extremely close, too. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. I think Max edged him on the striking. He landed the harder shots IMO and controlled the center of the octagon again. But Volkanovski got a takedown. It was one of those technically he got him to the ground, so it has to count for something, but he couldn't hold him there. So how do you score that?
Round 5 was pretty clearly Volkanovski IMO. Of course this is the round that the stats say the striking was almost even and 1 judge actually scored for Max. Max did land some solid, clean shots, but so did Volkanovski and he also got another does it count takedown and then another takedown right at the end where he did have some control and got off some elbows.
As most of the talking heads are saying, this fight just highlights the flawed scoring system. Max clearly won the fight if you judge it as a whole, but there is definitely a case where Volkanovski won 3 rounds. Although, if you listen to Big John, maybe the scoring system is not understood enough by the fans and/or judges.
Luke Thomas and his co-host on the Showtime show, Brian Campbell, both agreed the scoring system sucks, but had different approaches to maybe fix it. Luke wants to go back to PRIDE scoring and just judge it as a whole. BC thinks you make knockdowns count as a point, so Max would have won Round 1 and 2 10-8 even though they weren't dominating rounds like how we normally see 10-8 round scored. I like structure, so I tend to agree more with BC, but I think something needs to be done. Of course nothing will be done and we'll just keep blaming it on shitty judges.