Love & War<\/a> podcast, Dean argued points can\u2019t automatically be taken away because every situation is different.<\/p>\n\u201cOK, so I have my hand on your head controlling your head,\u201d Dean said, bringing up an example from the first Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier fight at UFC 182 in which Jones poked Cormier\u2019s eyes. \u201cPerfectly fine. But of course you don\u2019t like that, you don\u2019t want your head controlled and you start moving your head around wildly and all of a sudden you get your eye on a finger. You actually put your eye on a finger because, yeah, you\u2019re doing the right thing but the way you chose to do it, you didn\u2019t choose to back off, you started rolling your head and somehow a finger got near your eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is that\u2019s why we can\u2019t make things automatic,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s why there has to be discretion because I know you don\u2019t think that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz didn\u2019t back down from his point, telling Dean that eye pokes should always result in a point deduction for the offending fighters. Dean then asked Cruz if low blows should be handled the same way given that they can arguably occur in an even wider variety of circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say your goal is you want to take this guy down, right?\u201d Dean said. \u201cAnd these things are split-second things decisions these guys make and they make them at real time. So he\u2019s kind of hard to take down, but I know when he\u2019s kicking he\u2019s on one leg and he\u2019s throwing his leg kick. He\u2019s throwing the kick, the target is my leg, I know that this is the perfect time for me to take him down because I\u2019m going to cause a car crash. While he\u2019s doing that kick, I\u2019m going to change levels and penetrate and he\u2019s not going to be able to move back because he\u2019s on one leg.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, because I changed the target [of] this kick, what caused me to shoot was because he stopped to throw a kick and that\u2019s what caused me to shoot. Now, my action that happened after he began his action is what caused the foul, me being kicked in the groin. So one point should be taken away from a guy who kicked?\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz continued to suggest eye pokes are different from other fouls, making the case that groin kicks aren\u2019t as bad because fighters are required to wear protective cups in their shorts. That didn\u2019t convince Dean, who sees the risk of injury as being just as high in either case and the potential consequences equally severe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is injury is injury,\u201d Dean said. \u201cThere\u2019s some fight actually that I referee\u2019d where I took a couple points from the guy and the guy who got kicked, he was hospitalized after that fight. So cup or not it\u2019s an injury and it\u2019s an injury, that\u2019s why we have to take it serious. No one wants to walk around here without an eye. None of us want to talk around here without at testicle either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is I don\u2019t think that they should be different.\u201d<\/p>\n
One point of contention fans and media have long debated is how much accountability referees should have. Should they be required to explain a controversial call to reporters? Should they lose assignments? Should there be some other form of public reprimand?<\/p>\n
According to Dean, referees have their own way of handling errors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have our people who we talk to and who hold us accountable and if something that somebody does doesn\u2019t make sense, they\u2019re going to get sat down,\u201d Dean said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to need to look at something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Herb Dean is one of MMA\u2019s most experienced referees and while he\u2019s aware of how frustrated fans often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-351520","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-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351520","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=351520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}