Referee Dan Miragliotta made the inexplicable decision to stand up the fight between Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan despite the Brazilian maintaining back control with a body triangle, which is one of the most dominant positions in the sport.<\/p>\n
Moments later, Nolan nearly scored a finish before ultimately putting Moicano away in the third round. While standups are always a referee\u2019s discretion, Miragliotta has been highly criticized for his decision, which took away a very dominant position from Moicano, who was still working for a finish when he was forced back to his feet.<\/p>\n
Retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown was shocked by the move, and he unleashed on Miragliotta when reacting to the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis f*cking standup,\u201d Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cWhat are these motherf*ckers doing? What the f*ck are we doing? I wonder if these commissions and judges, if they\u2019re getting any pressure from the UFC to do things like that. We should know the commissions, referees, judges, they\u2019re there to be neutral, they\u2019re there for the fighters and to enforce the rules as they sit. They should not be influencing a fight in any f*cking fashion at all. The referee is supposed to stay out of the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like standups in general. I don\u2019t like them at all as a rule. It\u2019s mixed martial arts, it\u2019s not kickboxing, it\u2019s not Muay Thai. We know there\u2019s a little bit of a push from the UFC to be more exciting, to be on the feet more, they\u2019re not signing as many wrestlers. We have to question if there\u2019s some influence there to the commissions, but the commissions should be completely neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unknown how much Miragliotta\u2019s standup ultimately affected the fight but Moicano lost a dominant position and then he was nearly finished moments later.<\/p>\n
When the third round got started, Nolan completely took over and then put Moicano away to score the biggest win of his young career. In the end, Moicano suffered a loss in a fight he was dominating just moments later.<\/p>\n
Brown knows referees have difficult, thankless jobs when it comes to MMA, but he also recognizes that the egregious standup potentially cost Moicano the fight and yet Miragliotta won\u2019t suffer any consequences for his actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we forget, that fight is Moicano\u2019s f*cking life,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe affected his life. He affected the amount of money he got today. He affected the amount of money he\u2019s going to get in his next fight. He affected his ranking. His ability to work towards whether it\u2019s a title run or a bigger fight. He affected his sponsorship. That\u2019s literally his entire life he\u2019s affecting with an absolutely foolish call. An absolutely foolish call.<\/p>\n
\u201cDan Miragliotta f*cked up big time. Should be reprimanded. It should never happen again. He should suffer at minimum those same consequences [as Renato Moicano]. He should lose some money. He should lose his ability to ref big fights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown also argues that Miragliotta\u2019s mistake is just another glaring example of inconsistency with refereeing in the sport, which is just impossibly tough on the athletes.<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s a standup like what happened at UFC Vegas 123, or point deductions for fouls, Brown knows that fighters are dramatically affected by how a referee calls a fight, and he\u2019s seen far too many inconsistencies happen over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a former competitor myself, as a fan of the sport, a hardcore fan, I want consistency,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe fighters should know what\u2019s going to happen, which is the other point, too. There was no warning. Miragliotta didn\u2019t give him any warnings, which is complete garbage. That makes it even worse. All an athlete can ask for is consistency. He has to know what he\u2019s getting into Moicano needs to know \u2018OK, if I don\u2019t do something, I\u2019m going to get stood up.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way he ever expected in his life he\u2019s going to hold the back for however long he held it for and worry about getting stood up at all. He worked very hard to get to that position. Why should he get stood up from there?\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>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Referee Dan Miragliotta made the inexplicable decision to stand up the fight between Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956855,"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":["post-956854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956854","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=956854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}