As of late, much of the criticism from Dana White and fans has been centered on the state of judging in the UFC and mixed martial arts. While judging does remains a large problem since the judge’s decisions directly determine the winner, tonight’s event highlighted the lack of competent referees in the sport.
Poor refereeing can have as much an impact on the outcome of the fights as poor judging. Poor judging isn’t just limited to missed illegal blows. Premature stand-ups can impact the outcome of fights as well.
Terrible judging was in full-force tonight starting with Charles Oliveira’s illegal knee to Nick Lentz. While I do not believe that Oliveira is a dirty fighter and he was most likely caught up in the moment, the knee was blatant and should have been called right away.
When I saw that knee, I instantly had a flashback to the knee that Michael Bisping delivered to Jorge Rivera. It wasn’t incidental contact and it wasn’t close to being a borderline call.
Lentz clearly had a knee on the canvas and Oliveira put him in a clinch and delivered a crushing knee that led to the end of the fight. A blatant missed call like that is simply inexcusable and when you are in charge of someone’s safety, you need to be fully aware of what’s going on.
There were other bad calls throughout the night as well. The premature stand-up of Rick Story was baffling.
The ground game in MMA is complicated and even though two fighters may be stuck in the same position for several moments, they are often working to gain an advantage or are in the process of trying to set up a submission or a sweep.
Story was clearly working to set up a submission and as long as two fighters are working, they should never be stood up.
The only position that really merits a stand-up is when a fighter is in someone’s guard and is making no effort to pass but any other position such as the one Story was in, the two fighters should be allowed to fight their way through.
Along with these two bad calls I was also not a fan of the constant yelling of instructions by referees to the fighters. It seemed like every 4-5 seconds the referees were continuing to tell the fighters to pick up the pace or work.
My favorite line of the night was, “I don’t see anything, so start working” when one fighter was trying to set up a submission.
The job of the referee is to watch for the fighters’ safety and only interact with fighters when they need to.
Refs should not serve as cheerleaders and the sign of a good referee is one that you don’t notice.
So while the state of judging still leaves something to be desired, the problem of finding enough competent referees to work an event is still something that needs to be addressed.
I apologize for how choppy this article is, but this is just a quick reflection of some of the things that I saw on tonight’s card.
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