Gegard Mousasi picked up a second-round TKO win over Chris Weidman in the co-main event of last night’s (April 8, 2017) UFC 210 from the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York, but it wasn’t an extremely large amount of controversy.
The fight was stopped in the second after Mousasi hit Weidman with a knee that referee Dan Miragliotta dubbed illegal, giving Weidman five minutes to potentially recover. But when the strike was reviewed on cageside video by the fledgling New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC), it was deemed legal and the fight was then called off as a win for Mousasi.
“The Dreamcatcher” may have finished Weidman after the big knee, but the outcome remained uncertain at that time nonetheless, and a referee giving a fighter time to recover shouldn’t lead to a clear win from the opponent without any resolution.
After the bout, Weidman spoke up to FOX Sports to voice his frustration at the head-scratching result:
The former champion, who is currently on the worst streak of his MMA career with three straight losses (albeit to top 5-ranked competition) said he wants a rematch with Mousasi and will also appeal the ruling:
“Oh, immediate rematch and appeal. You know, I wanna get three round with him fair and square. And I wanna finish him. I felt great. And what happened just sucks for everybody, I just feel bad for everybody who was watching at home and out here. And obviously for me, it was not the way I wanted this thing to turn out, so it’s going to be a tough pill to swallow, but I want the right thing to happen.”
Weidman elaborated further on the details of his puzzling loss, noting that while the replay may have showed his hand was not down during the knee, the referee had already ruled that it was, and therefore it was not legal to sue the replay to determine the outcome of the fight and switch a decision the official had already made:
“It’s such a messy thing. First of all, they just changed that rule, first of all it was like one hand, then it was two hands, and then they stopped the fight because, I thought my hand was down but apparently in the replay it wasn’t. But the ref thought it was. You can’t go back on that by looking at a replay during a fight. That’s not legal.”
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