Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports
One of MMA’s most notable referees has found himself the subject of virulent backlash following Colby Covington’s complaints about his 5th round TKO loss to Kamaru Usman at UFC 245.
On the surface, Marc Goddard’s stoppage of Colby Covington at UFC 245 seemed simple enough. Covington had noted that his jaw may be broken earlier in the fight. Visibly exhausted, he was knocked down hard twice late in the fifth round, where he began eating punches and struggling to regain his composure. The ref stepped in, the fight was over.
The aftermath, however, has not been so simple.
Aside from his later revelation that his jaw wasn’t broken, Covington was quick to complain about the stoppage following the bout. The welterweight challenger quickly took to twitter to tell fans that Goddard “robbed” him of the opportunity to “kill or be killed.” And that he “robbed the people of a fair fight.”
Those comments, among others, only added to the regular wave of backlash that comes with being a longtime MMA ref—often including death threats and allegations of fight fixing, as Goddard revealed in a recent interview with UFC commentator Dan Hardy.
“You’re entitled to your own opinions (I don’t actually subscribe to that school of thought), but you’re not entitled to your own facts,” Goddard told Hardy. “You’re not, are you? Everybody wants an opinion on a fight, I’m more concerned about a reasoned opinion—if you give me a balanced, educated opinion. Look, if you’re driving a bus and I run alongside you at a traffic light and go, ‘You fucking dickhead, you’re driving the bus like a prick. Why are you doing that?’ Because that’s my timeline on Twitter and Instagram for two weeks. That’s my timeline. And, ‘You’re gonna die,’ and you’re this and that, ‘Kill yourself.’ ‘You’re scum,’ ‘You’re betting on fights,’ ‘You’re a cheat,’ you’re this. Mate, and I’m talking not one or two or 50 of that—hundreds. Literally hundreds. But, you know, that’s the life of a ref.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I? 20 years later. But, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know. I don’t know is it worth it?” Godard said, reflecting on the abuse he’s taken online. “You know, when something like that happens, it’s weird because… like I said with other sports, everybody saw Colby’s reaction and when he’s calling me this and that. It’s one thing to have an opinion, disagree with a stoppage, that’s one thing. When you’re calling me a ‘cocksucker’ and calling me a ‘cheat’–‘Don’t come back to America,’ ‘I’m gonna slap you’–and all of that, that’s a different thing, Dan Hardy. That’s a different thing altogether.”
Still despite all the backlash he’s faced, not just for his stoppage of Covington, but over the length of his career. Goddard made it clear that he feels it’s important to not stoop to arguing with those who disagree with him.
“And people will go—obviously that fight: ‘Why did you stop Colby in that fight?’ Well, I think I’ve just articulated that pretty concisely,” said Goddard, after walking through his view on the final moments of the bout. “And if you don’t agree with me? So be it. As a fighter I can take that. Some of the fat—like I said mate, I’ve seen the abuse. I’m talking—because Colby was directly tagging me in these social media posts. Am I gonna rise to that? No, I’m not. You know, because I’m better than that. And I’m a professional and I’ll try and deal with it in a better way.”
For his part, however, Covington doesn’t sound like he’s about to let his feud with Goddard pass, telling Ariel Helwani earlier this month, “I knew he had it out for me the second he came out of the locker room… He’ll never ref one of my fights as long as I live, I promise you that.”