LAS VEGAS — If you used your Twitter timeline as a judge, Herb Dean’s stoppage of the Ronda Rousey vs. Sara McMann fight on Saturday night was one of the worst of all-time.
One high-profile Twitterer who disagrees with the notion is UFC president Dana White.
At the UFC 170 post-fight press conference at Mandalay Bay, White said that like most others, he thought Dean’s stoppage at 1:06 of the first round after Rousey landed a brutal knee to the liver was too fast.
But upon looking at the replay, White changed his mind.
“You get hit to the body like that, and regular people who have never been hit to the body have no f—— clue what that feels like,” White said. “Believe me when I tell you. She went down on her knees and she turned her head the other way. Could Herb have let her take some shots to the face? When the fight happened when I saw it, I said ‘oh man.’ Then I watched the replay and I thought it was a good stoppage.”
Dean had taken criticism earlier in the evening for what many felt was a late stoppage in Mike Pyle’s third-round TKO win over T.J. Waldburger. But there, too, White defended Dean.
“It didn’t look as bad to me on the replay as it did when it was happening live,” White said. “A lot of those punches missed, elbows missed, and yes he ate a couple hard elbows and when he did eat the hard elbows, that’s when Herb stopped the fight.”
Rousey, meanwhile, wasn’t about to complain about the stoppage.
“I didn’t think it was too soon,” the UFC women’s bantamweight champion said. “I would have kept going if someone hadn’t stopped me, I would have kept going. It’s not my decision.”