Dan Miragliotta arguably had one of his worst nights at the office during UFC Vancouver when the veteran referee made a glaring error by stopping a fight three seconds before the end of a round and then declaring that the action would continue.<\/p>\n
The debacle unfolded after Kyle Nelson put Matt Frevola on the canvas and started blasting away with some vicious ground and pound. It appeared Frevola was done, so Miragliotta stepped in to stop the fight just before the horn sounded to end the round.<\/p>\n
But Nelson\u2019s celebration was short lived as Miragliotta claimed he was just separating the fighters at the end of a round rather than calling for a stoppage but replays showed very clearly there was still three seconds left on the clock when he got between Nelson and Frevola. The egregious error earned Miragliotta some boos, but he still stayed working other fights on the card, and it\u2019s highly unlikely he\u2019ll face any repercussions for the mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese commissions, what are they doing?\u201d UFC legend Matt Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer about the lack of oversight when it comes to referees like Miragliotta messing up. \u201cReally what are the commissions doing? I don\u2019t know what their job is. The promoters have to pay them, they work for the state. I know technically what their job is. They should be making sure the promoter is doing their job, and the fighters aren\u2019t getting ripped off, and the referees are legitimate referees and the judges are legitimate [judges].<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the f*ck are they actually doing? I don\u2019t think they\u2019re actually doing anything. I think they\u2019re doing what the f*ck they\u2019re told by the UFC primarily, or TKO so to speak, and they\u2019re all bought and paid for.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Brown concedes that referees have a particularly thankless job that largely goes unnoticed when they make the right calls versus the moments that get amplified when something goes wrong.<\/p>\n
But Brown also knows referees and judges hold an immense amount of power over a fight and a fighter\u2019s career, which is why he wishes they had to face the same level of scrutiny as the athletes they\u2019re overseeing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to be a repercussion,\u201d Brown argued. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t even have to be, depending on the number of times, have to be that severe the first time. But you\u2019re affecting people\u2019s lives. You remember my fight with Pete Sell. This has got to be one of the top five egregious reffing moments in history. I have no hate for Yves Lavigne or anything. I think he\u2019s a good person. I think he meant well, but that was just absolutely f*cking horrid. How many punches did Pete Sell, who is already punch-drunk enough to start with, all respect to Pete, love that guy, but he\u2019ll admit he\u2019s taken a few shots in his life. He did not need the extra shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve said it many times before, in that particular fight with me and Pete Sell, what if he just threw a Hail Mary and knocked me out? I don\u2019t think that was going to happen. I\u2019ve got a pretty good chin. I think I was fine but that happens. Crazy things happen. If he threw that Hail Mary and knocked me out, now my life is affected. The rest of my UFC career could have been vastly different. When I\u2019m fighting a fight that I thought was already stopped. That\u2019s just one example, but I\u2019ve never heard of a repercussion towards a referee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest example of a referee facing blowback from repeated mistakes is Steve Mazzagatti, who routinely got called out by UFC CEO Dana White for the way he called fights when serving as the third man in the octagon.<\/p>\n
White\u2019s opinion reverberated so loudly that Mazzagatti eventually stopped appearing on major UFC events, but there was never an official position from any athletic commission that some sort of action was taken against the referee.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven that, was that because the commission stepped up and said hey we\u2019re done with this or is that because the UFC, particularly Dana White who clearly didn\u2019t like Mazzagatti, was like \u2018hey guys, f*ck him, we don\u2019t want him no more\u2019 and they\u2019re like whatever you say, King Dana,\u2019\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Brown truly believes that speaks to a much larger problem plaguing the sport because Miragliotta\u2019s mistakes, which also includes stopping two fights early at UFC Kansas City back in April after hearing a clapper that actually signifies 10 seconds left rather than the end of a round, have never really come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my point. What are these f*cking commissions doing?\u201d Brown said. \u201cAre they working for the UFC or are they working for the people? As far as I can tell, they\u2019re supposed to be working for the people. They are government employees, they\u2019re getting paid with our tax dollars, and I think they make some percentage of revenue from events that happen but ultimately they are public servants. What the f*ck are they doing?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that they\u2019re public servants, politicians, pretty much answers the question. They\u2019re in the public space and there\u2019s just something that you cross that line into public space, you become a piece of shit and suck at everything and you are pretty much useless to humanity anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between rounds this past Saturday night, UFC vice president of regulatory affairs Marc Ratner said that Miragliotta told him he thought he heard a horn sounding, which is why he stopped the fight between Nelson and Frevola.<\/p>\n
Brown could only laugh at that suggestion, and in the end, Miragliotta just kept on working as if nothing actually happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t say you heard a horn. Are you just hearing voices in your head?\u201d Brown said with a laugh. \u201cYou at least got to have a good excuse. Motherf*ckers, there\u2019s got to be a consequence for everything. That\u2019s how things are held to a standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no repercussion for what they do. There\u2019s a huge repercussion for the fighter. I lose this fight, of course I get half my paycheck, that\u2019s not the end of it. That\u2019s a [loss] on my record for one. I now don\u2019t get paid as much in my next fight \u2026 but it has way more repercussions than \u2018you lost this fight, go onto fight another day.\u2019 There has to be a balance the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Miragliotta arguably had one of his worst nights at the office during UFC Vancouver when the veteran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,37036,329,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-229616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-mmaf-podcast-network","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}