{"id":28672,"date":"2025-07-28T23:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28672\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T23:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:53:11","slug":"jon-anik-criticizes-referee-for-not-stopping-brutal-ufc-abu-dhabi-fight-earlier-suggests-5-knockdown-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/28672\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Anik criticizes referee for not stopping brutal UFC Abu Dhabi fight earlier, suggests 5-knockdown rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Anik<\/a> was as confused as the rest of us watching Steven Nguyen<\/a> put a prolonged beatdown on Mohammad Yahya<\/a> at UFC Abu Dhabi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nguyen set a UFC record by scoring six knockdowns (though there appeared to be at least one more than the official number) against Yahya en route to a dominant second-round knockout<\/a>, which was only called at the very end of the period due to a doctor stoppage. Fans and fighters were quick to question referee Jason Herzog<\/a> not stepping in to save Yahya earlier.<\/p>\n

On his Anik & Florian<\/a> podcast, Anik explained why he\u2019s one of the many voices criticizing Herzog.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we doing in the form of fighter safety?\u201d Anik said. \u201cMaybe I should call my friend Jason Herzog, who I really do love, \u2018Hey Jason, it\u2019s Jon. Can you do a me a favor and just stop the fight?\u2019 There\u2019s a lot to unpack here. … Jason Herzog was the referee for [Daniel] Zellhuber and [Esteban] Ribovics and if you hear nothing else I say today, I don\u2019t know if I was suggestive on the broadcast that that fight should have been stopped at one point in time, but I thought Zellhuber should have sort of been saved to maybe live to fight another day, and the result was that Herzog rather masterfully let the fight play out and the result was the Fight of the Year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut my thesis always is what are we doing in the form of fighter safety? The ends don\u2019t justify the means if there\u2019s a rally and a Fight of the Year ensues. Just because Mohammad Yahya doesn\u2019t have an orbital fracture doesn\u2019t mean that heretofore he\u2019s not going to pay dearly for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the call with Felder for UFC Abu Dhabi were commentators and former UFC fighters Paul Felder<\/a> and Michael Bisping<\/a>. The two have been in plenty of wars themselves, but even they wondered what the limit was for the amount of punishment Yahya would be allowed to endure.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul Felder said towards the end of Round 2, \u2018This fight\u2019s not going to continue, right? Because eventually a physician\u2019s going to get involved here,\u2019\u201d Anik said. \u201cBisping first called for a potential stoppage because of all the knockdowns at the two-and-a-half minute mark exactly of Round 1, and I do believe we\u2019re not assessing concussive damage live in the minute, but after myriad knockdowns\u2014I\u2019m not saying there should be a knockdown rule in mixed martial arts, but it does exist for a reason, but after six or seven of these f*cking things, we can stop the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Herzog, this is the second time in two weeks he\u2019s been the subject of criticism from the MMA community, as several fighters also called him out<\/a> for stopping the UFC Nashville<\/a> main event too early. Herzog ended that fight in just 35 seconds as Derrick Lewis<\/a> was battering Tallison Teixeira<\/a>, who was illegally grabbing the fence with both hands to try and recover.<\/p>\n

Anik sympathizes with Herzog, who is dealing with the blame for two opposite kinds of errors.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re damned if you do, you\u2019re damned if you don\u2019t,\u201d Anik said. \u201cThey all connect together. We can think back to Cheick Kongo<\/a> and Pat Barry<\/a>. I just think, Kevin MacDonald, a lot of early stoppages in his career as a referee and I\u2019ve said repeatedly that as a ref you are going to be universally praised\u2014I guess not universally, but the consensus is going to praise you if you let a fight go long and chaos Fight-of-the-Year-type shit ensues.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are going to be roundly criticized if you stop a fight too early, especially in a big setting like a main event or a title fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Yahya\u2019s corner, Anik doesn\u2019t think they should be absolved of responsibility either.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlenty,\u201d Anik said when asked how much blame Yahya\u2019s corner should receive. \u201cAnd it\u2019s probably shame on me for not acknowledging their culpability in all of this. I don\u2019t know. For the sake of the show, I watched it, and I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m being particularly reactionary right now, but it was not good. Not good.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many knockdowns\u2014like, I don\u2019t think we need a three-knockdown rule in MMA, but how about this, if you get knocked down five times in an MMA round, do you think it\u2019s fair that they stop the fight?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jon Anik was as confused as the rest of us watching Steven Nguyen put a prolonged beatdown on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[1930,27448,64,63,27451,27449,1931,27452,1913,786,580,585,12528,27454,1347,785,6314,24097,27455,85,27450,27453,787,1396],"class_list":["post-28672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-abu","tag-anik","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brutal","tag-criticizes","tag-dhabi","tag-earlier","tag-fight","tag-fighting","tag-for","tag-front-page","tag-jon","tag-knockdown","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-not","tag-referee","tag-rule","tag-sports","tag-stopping","tag-suggests","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}