The 41-year old former middleweight champion Sam Soliman, who suffered a questionable knockdown in round four, made the fight ugly, landed more punches in 7 of 10 rounds and threw 13 more punches per round than Dominic Wade.
Australia's former IBF middleweight boxing world champion Sam Soliman has suffered a contentious 10-round split-decision points loss to unbeaten American professional Dominic Wade in the United States.
Two judges scored in favour of Wade, 97-92 and 95-94, while their colleague had Soliman winning 96-93.
Statistics for the fight in Shelton, Washington showed 41-year-old Soliman landed 24 more punches, 98 to 74, and the decision was greeted with more boos than cheers.
The decisive moment of the bout was a fourth-round knockdown scored against Soliman.
Wade landed a shot which Soliman appeared to mostly block, but the Australian was off balance at the time and slipped to the canvas, with veteran referee Jack Reiss scoring it a knockdown.
Soliman seemed to shade most of the later rounds, outworking 25-year-old Wade, who relied on landing the occasional right-hand power punch.
Wade was cautioned by Reiss in round six for picking Soliman up and throwing him to the canvas, but was not penalised a point.
The shorter Soliman looked the busier fighter inside and landed with a number of sneaky right uppercuts, while Wade had a slight advantage in jabs through the 10 rounds.
Wade's record improves to 18-0 with 12 KOs, while Soliman's drops to 44-13 (18 KOs).