Showdown Joe roughs up the refs

Referees in the UFC have made some lousy – make that just plain bad – calls lately.

Yves Lavigne’s late stoppage of the Matt Brown/Pete Sell fight at UFC 96, for example. Brown destroyed Sell, firing strikes as Sell backpedaled, fell, got up, got hit some more, fell some more. Sell clearly wasn’t protecting himself and at one point Brown actually paused and looked at Lavigne clearly asking for him to step in and put an end to the beating. Clearly asking Lavigne to do his damn job. Which Lavigne did a few seconds later, ending the bout.

The exact opposite thing occurred on the undercard of the same event. Shane Nelson landed a few punches on Aaron Riley, including a right hand that sent him to the mat, at which point – just 44 seconds into round one – referee Rick Fike waved off the bout, even though Riley was conscious, coherant and clearly capable of defending himself. It was not a knockout punch. Not even close.

But these are just the latest. UFC president Dana White has stated unequivocally on a number of occasions that referee Steve Mazzagatti “has no business being in this business.” Mazzagatti, you might recall, was in the cage when Frank Mir and Brock Lesnar fought the first time at UFC 81. He was the one who stood the two fighters up while Lesnar was in mid-maul so that he could deduct a point from Lesnar for punches to the back of the head. Even on the replays it’s hard to tell if Mazzagatti had ever warned Lesnar about the illegal blows. What is clear is that Mir was being pummeled pretty severely at the time they were stood up and that Mir then went on to win the fight with a kneebar submission. Clearly, Mazzagatti will not be the man in charge of the action for the rematch at UFC 100.

And yes, before I go further, let me say that referees have a tough job and it’s awfully easy to sit here and be a backseat referee with my instant replay and multiple angles. That’s why I think I’ll leave the rest of this argument – that the officiating needs to be better regulated – up to “Showdown” Joe Ferraro.

If you pay attention to MMA, at least here in Canada, then you probably know Joe, the sports broadcaster. He’s a good guy and he knows MMA. And now he knows refereeing, too. Joe was in Edmonton last weekend where he took “Big” John McCarthy’s C.O.M.M.A.N.D. (Certification of Officials for Mixed Martial Arts National Development) course. McCarthy’s been with the UFC since the beginning and made his debut as a ref at UFC 2, and his course is the only one of its kind. (Most MMA refs come from a boxing background or a karate background and probably don’t know a kimura from Cap’n Crunch.)

Joe says that would-be referees must know and identify over 25 takedowns, 35 submissions, 25 positions and seven sweeps, reversals and transitions, as well as the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts front to back as part of the course. Then they have to get in the cage and referee an actual fight, on which they will be evaluated. A passing grade is 90 percent and the failure rate is 75 percent.

It’s a great story, and it’s an important story. As Joe points out, judges may have the outcome of the fight in their hands, referees have the fighters’ lives. Here’s Joe’s basic argument (and the answer is a no brainer any way you look at it):

If the four major sports leagues — the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL — mandate that officials are properly trained before being allowed to step onto the playing surface, why doesn’t MMA do the same? If this sport is expected to be taken seriously then this type of certification must be the bare minimum an athletic commission requires from an applicant prior to receiving their license to ref or judge.

I could go on, but Joe says it way better than I could. Go check out his story.