Leandro Silva was attempting a guillotine, but Drew Dober was fine. Dober was in half guard and Silva was about to give up on the choke.
That’s when referee Eduardo Herdy stepped in to call the fight. Herdy must have thought Dober tapped, because he inexplicably awarded the bout to Silva by submission in the second round at UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. LaFlare on Saturday in Rio de Janeiro.
UFC president Dana White called it “one of the biggest referee screw-ups of all time” on the FOX Sports 1 post-fight show. White said the UFC will give Dober his win bonus and also petition the Brazilian MMA commission (CABMMA) to overturn the result into a no contest.
“Everybody in this room and everybody on this planet knows that was bullsh*t,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “Hopefully that can be overturned into a no-contest and we do it fair.”
White, though, was not totally confident that would actually get done.
“[It’s] probably gonna be tough to do, because these athletic commissions, they protect their own,” he said on FS1. “They’ll back up their refs. But this one is so blatant, so bad, I just don’t see how you don’t overturn this and make this a no contest.”
Dober (15-7) was classy in defeat immediately after the fight talking to color commentator Kenny Florian. But it was obvious that he was incredibly bummed about getting robbed of a fight.
“You train,” Dober said. “You put your heart, your soul, you bleed, you cry, and the referee stops the fight for no reason. He said that I needed to tap three times, and I did not tap once.”
Meanwhile, Silva (18-2) tried to keep up the charade.
“For me, he blacked out,” he said. “A win is a win, and that is what I was looking for.”
White said that Herdy should never referee another MMA fight again, though he heard that he is actually a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. FOX Sports analyst Brian Stann backed White up, saying that Herdy should be stripped of his license to ref.
“Anybody who follows this sport knows that guy wasn’t in any danger right there,” White said. “He actually was just slipping out of it and he was on the top position, where he could have done damage or possibly finished the fight and this guy calls it.”
White said his regulatory people would absolutely push the CABMAA to make the bout a no contest.
“Nothing against the kid who won,” White said. “He didn’t make the call. He’s happy. But that was bullshit and it needs to be fixed.”