Veterandomaren Herb Dean försvarade det kontroversiella stoppet vid helgens match mellan Francisco Trinaldo och Jai Herbert som fick UFC-kommentatorn Dan Hardy att se rött och skälla ut domaren.
Kontroversen skedde när Trinaldo träffade Herbert med en överhandsvänster vilket helt klart gjorde den senare medvetslös. Dean valde dock att låta matchen fortsätta vilket gjorde att Trinaldo fick in två ytterligare förödande slag innan domaren utdömde TKO.
Hardy, som är en tidigare fighter, blev rasande över Deans tvekan att stoppa matchen och kunde höras skrika mot domaren från sin sittplats vid kommentatorsbåset. Kort efter detta konfronterade han Dean och sade följande enligt BJPENN.com:
I’m doing my job, now you do yours! Gotta look out for these fighters. My goodness!
Hardy valde sedan att släppa ett uttalande med sin åsikt om vad som hände:
Herb Dean försvarar stoppet
Dean valde efter detta att ge ett eget uttalande där han försvarade stoppet. Han sade följande till MMAFighting:
There’s a fight that some people said could have been stopped earlier, think it was stopped late. By no means was that a late stoppage.
Anyone who believes or not is maybe just following because someone with a microphone says it’s a (bad) stoppage. But if you know anything about fighting, a fighter got hurt, fighters get rocked all the time but we’re looking at his actions. He’s tracking his opponent. He knows where his opponent is. He’s put both arms in between him and his opponent. He’s lifted his leg up, head off the mat. He’s doing everything I can ask for him to do to stay in that fight. There wasn’t a bad stoppage.
Dean valde sedan att förklara vaRför det är farligt för en kommentator att försöka influera ett matchstopp.
During the match, someone yelled out ‘stop the fight.’ This is really interesting because there’s only professionals there. There’s not one fan in the building. Everybody has a job there, everybody knows what they’re job is and they have specific duties. I have a job to referee the fight. One of my duties is to stop the fight when the fighter’s taken too much damage.
This is a very dangerous thing to do. If you put on your Superman shirt and decide that you’re the smartest person in the room. Smarter than the physician, smarter than the corner who works with the guy and smarter than the referee, you’re doing a chance that you could bring in information that could do the fighter disservice. I’m looking at the match, I believe I’m getting information from the people qualified to do it.
Under no circumstances, even I as a referee, get up and yell and tell another referee to stop the match. If I were to do that, I would know it would be a situation where I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. I know that there could be consequences that you’d never see me in that position again but I would sleep well knowing that I did that.
If you open your mouth and yell the words ‘stop the fight’ it could easily be mistaken for the people who are officially qualified to yell stop the fight. It should never be done.
UFC kommer utreda konfrontationen
Vid post-fight presskonferensen för helgens gala valde topprepresentanten David Shaw att kommentera incidenten och berättade då enligt MMAJunkie att UFC kommer utreda konfrontationen:
I wasn’t on the floor when it happened. I did hear some of the comments on the broadcast. Here’s the thing, being a ref in MMA is one of the hardest roles that you can have, and Herb Dean is one of our best, categorically. (The) bottom line is, health and safety of the athletes is of paramount importance. On the other side, you’ve got a guy like Hardy who, very successful MMA career, an excellent analyst right now, but he’s passionate and he’s fiery.
The important thing for us to do is to try and get a handle and try to get an understanding of what actually happened,” Shaw added. “Obviously, this is not something that you address with either one of the parties during the show. These guys have a job to do and so we certainly don’t want to disrupt their efforts to do an excellent job, as we expect they always will. So we’ll go back, we’ll check it out, try to get a better understanding of what happened and really take it from there.
Shaw tycktes sedan mena at Hardy inte hade rätt att interagera med Dean på det sättet:
I guess the bottom line is there’s one group of people that are able to talk to officials during the fight night, and that’s (Marc) Ratner’s regulatory group, and no one else. So we’ll see what happens next week when we get back to the office.
Det återstår att se vad utfallet blir av utredningen.
