\u2018Big\u2019 John McCarthy<\/a> on the Weighing In Podcast.<\/p>\n\u201cThe bell rang. Prates walked away. Now, the ref [should] go, hey, walk up to the corner.
You have that, you got to give him a chance, right? Walk to the corner,\u201d Thomson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe waved it off before his back even hit the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a discussion to be had,\u201d Thomson continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you not look at him and go, the round\u2019s over. If you can get up and walk to your corner, let the fight happen. If you can\u2019t, if I say, get up, fighter. [If] you can\u2019t, fight\u2019s over. But he was already waving it off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ref is already standing over him waving the fight is off,\u201d Thomson said of why Neal didn\u2019t move after he was grounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I see that. If I see a ref doing that, the fight\u2019s over. So, why would I move? He just laid back.\u201d<\/p>\n
John McCarthy defends referee\u2019s \u2018great stoppage\u2019 at UFC 319<\/p>\n
No follow-up shots were needed from Prates as referee Jason Herzog stopped the contest at the bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great, great stoppage by Jason,\u201d longtime referee John McCarthy praised Herzog\u2019s stoppage.<\/p>\n
McCarthy disagreed with Thomson\u2019s comments regarding the stoppage, saying Neal was unable to continue after being dropped by Prates.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t just lay back. He closed his eyes because he was in pain,\u201d McCarthy said of Neal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Prates produced one of the best knockouts of all time at UFC 319. The \u2018Fighting Nerds\u2019 star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,39552,39551,47281,32099,82,640,38068],"class_list":["post-77678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-carlos-prates","tag-geoff-neal","tag-john-mccarthy","tag-josh-thomson","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-319"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77678","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=77678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Carlos](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2230528302-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Geoff Stellfox\/Getty ImagesJosh Thomson argues Geoff Neal should\u2019ve been given chance to recover at UFC 319<\/p>\n