Almost a week after UFC 210, people are still talking about the fiasco that took place in the co-main event between Gegard Mousasi and Chris Weidman. In the second round of the fight, Mousasi had Weidman in a front headlock position, and he landed two knees. One of which referee Dan Miragliotta ruled illegal because Weidman had his arms extended to the canvas. This led to Miragliotta assuming that Mousasi had kneed a “downed opponent,” and stopped the fight to give Weidman some time to recover. However, that is when things got weird as ringside official John McCarthy informed Miragliotta that, upon consultation of instant replay. Miragliotta attempted to restart the bout but was told by the ringside physicians that Weidman was unable to continue. This is how the bout ended and saw Mousasi walk away with a controversial TKO victory.
Following the fight, it seems like everyone is giving their opinion of it and that includes UFC commentator Joe Rogan, who recently talked about it while on a recent episode of The Church of What’s Happening Now with Joey Diaz. According to Rogan, Miragliotta made an understandable mistake and that he’s catching undue flak for what happened.
“Here’s two reasons why it’s hard for Miragliotta,” Rogan said (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting). “First of all, he’s a giant. You have to understand, Dan Miragliotta is like, 6-foot-5, 300 pounds. He’s a huge man. He’s f**king huge. He towers over most of the fighters. So he’s above these guys, and if Mousasi is pinning down Weidman, so he’s got him in a headlock and he’s pulling him down and he’s kneeing him the face like he was, think of how tall Miragliotta is in the first place. Now think, he’s looking down at these guys kneeing each other in the head and he’s got to stay close by in case something happens. There’s no way he could see those hands from where he was standing. So he took an educated guess based on his many, many years of refereeing that both hands were down. And it was so close, you would have to be on the other side of the ring looking at the ground to know whether or not [the hands] were touching. If you’re above it the way Miragliotta was, how could he know? He really couldn’t know and it’s not his fault. He’s an excellent referee.”
This all leads to asking the question if Miragliotta, the man in charge of the bout and the one who called the foul illegal, isn’t to blame for this error. Rogan thinks that the fault for the controversy should rest with the NYSAC.
“The fault is that the athletic commission, under situations like this, doesn’t use an instant replay and they should because it’s the fair thing to do to make sure that the fight is fair. I think Weidman could have gone on. Had there been a question about whether or not it was illegal, they could look at the instant replay and then they make the call. ‘The strikes are legal, we’re gonna continue.’ And you either continue them from the exact same position or you have a protocol in place, like you have to separate them, go back to their corners, and re-engage, which is bad for Mousasi because Mousasi had him in a good position and was landing strikes.
“It wasn’t Dan’s decision to stop the fight. It was the commission’s decision, I’m pretty sure and I think it’s because they didn’t know what else to do. They didn’t have a thing to do in place. It’s hard. It takes a while to figure out how to correctly referee and judge and officiate in a state athletic commission that hasn’t had mixed martial arts before and all of a sudden they have it. . . And then the commission, unfortunately, though the referees that were in place were really high level, there’s a commission that’s really not used to doing this. It’s not their fault, they just don’t have the experience.”
Rogan believes that the fight should have been restarted from the position that they were in when Miragliotta stopped it.
“It’s just unfortunate for Weidman, unfortunate for Mousasi, unfortunate for the whole division. . . The whole thing is unfortunate.”
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