(Shove a ref, receive a pink slip. Single leg takedown a ref, receive GIF glory.)
So those corrupt, two-timing, no-good shysters known as the New Mexico Athletic Commission held a meeting in Albuquerque to deal with the fallout from Fight Night 42 yesterday. On the evening’s agenda: Determining Jason High‘s punishment for shoving referee Kevin Mulhall following his second round TKO defeat to Rafael Dos Anjos, and upholding or denying Ross Pearson’s decision loss to Diego Sanchez.
Unfortunately for High, his moment of cloudy judgement had already seen him axed from the UFC before Dana White could even review the footage of the incident. And now, the hits just keep on coming for “The Kansas City Bandit”, who might want to consider changing his nickname to “H.R. Shoven Stuff” (I am so sorry). High was handed down a one year suspension from the New Mexico Athletic Commission for his err in judgment and fined 10% of his $19,000 purse, or $1,900. But that’s just a small price to pay for notoriety, amiright?
It’s a relatively unheard of suspension given the nature of High’s infraction. I can only think of a couple altercations between referees and fighters over the years that didn’t involve Gilbert Yvel — one was James Thompson/Dan Miragliotta at EliteXC: Primetime and the other was Phil Baroni/Larry Landless at UFC 45. While no punishment was given to Thompson for smushing Miragliotta’s face, Baroni actually punched Landless and received just a 4 month suspension for doing so. Diff’rent era, diff’rent rules, I guess.
In regards to the Sanchez/Person decision, it might shock you to learn that the NMAC decided to uphold Sanchez’s controversial win, stating quote, “You leave it in the f*cking hands of those incompetent f*cking judges, you f*cking deserve whatever comes of it. F*ck Bellator.”
I’m sorry, I must have mixed up Dana White’s statement with that of the NMAC. My b.
As we previously mentioned, Pearson was granted his win bonus by the UFC despite the loss and is expected to receive a step up in competition for his next fight as if he had won it anyways. In other words, we have now reached the era of MMA where we don’t even have to pretend that decisions matter in terms of matchmaking. Chael Sonnen’s unretirement status: Imminent.
Personally, I’m just wondering how Sanchez is dealing with the fact that his first win in his past three contests is being all but invalidated by everyone but the people who are supposed to be in charge of determining that sort of thing. It doesn’t exactly serve as a vote of confidence in the TUF 1 alum, but then again, perhaps if he focused more on coming at his bros and less on asking his bros to come at him, bro, he wouldn’t be at the center of so many controversial decisions (*cough* Kampmann *cough* Gomi *cough*)