Another week in MMA and another referee controversy. It feels like every week, some referee botches what should be a relatively simple task, leading to a bunch of discussions that, you would think, we’d be past by now. Sadly, we are not, so let’s discuss referees, Reinier de Ridder, and a whole bunch more in this week’s mailbag.
“How can a seasoned professional ref like Dan Miragliotta manage to f*ck up as badly as he did with the stoppage that then became a non-stoppage between Kyle Nelson and Matt Frevola? If I f*cked up that bad at my job, I would be fired. Do refs have share the same union as longshore workers or something?
First, MMA referees do not have a union, because even a union would look at what happens with them and say, “We’ve gotta do something, because they’re making us look terrible.” No, MMA referees have the one thing more effective at ensuring job security: athletic commissions.
There is zero accountability for referees in combat sports. None. Unless a referee came out publicly and admitted to accepting bribes, I do not know what would get a commission to intervene. Woeful incompetence certainly hasn’t, because there is an awful lot of that running around.
Second, the Kyle Nelson-Matt Frevola debacle wasn’t even Miragliotta’s worst offense this weekend!
Yes, stopping a fight and then restarting it is bad, no question. But it was, in the end, harmless as Nelson went on to win. And, more importantly, it was the “right” outcome. It’s my belief that Miragliotta jumped in, then saw Frevola wasn’t actually that hurt, and tried to bluff his way through it. And while that is horrible on many levels, in the end, the right guy won, and the guy who lost doesn’t feel cheated by an early stoppage.
But the Kevin Holland vs. Mike Malott is another kettle of fish entirely. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much incompetence on display in such a short space of time.
The refusal of some referees to ever take a point for a foul is infuriating. The entire design of taking points is to make a contest even after an illegal blow has been delivered. Very clearly, Kevin Holland was compromised and so was his ability to compete, so not deducting a point is outright wrong. Not taking a point there means Miragliotta’s de facto position is you can square an opponent in the groin twice, with no penalty at all. That is preposterous.
Next on the list of errors is sending Holland back out to fight at all, for multiple reasons. First, Holland clearly did not want to continue fighting. Miragliotta has been doing this for a long time; he knows when a fighter can and cannot compete. At the conclusion of the five-minute grace period, Holland would not answer him about being ready to fight, and Miragliotta just sent him back out there anyway. At the minimum, he should’ve called in the ringside physician, like he ended up doing between rounds, and probably should’ve just stopped the fight outright.
Actually, he definitely should’ve stopped the fight outright, because Holland DIDN’T ANSWER THE BELL! The rules are very clear that you have five minutes to recover from a low blow. Holland hemmed and hawed and ended up, by my timer, getting an additional 15 seconds of recovery. If Malott had gone on to lose, he could rightly be upset by the tomfoolery there.
AND THEN there’s the issue of what happened before the second round. Miragliotta finally called in the ringside doctor, who immediately was like, ‘He can’t fight if he doesn’t say he can,’ and Holland flat out refused to answer. Because Miragliotta mishandled that whole thing prior, had he refused to fight, Holland would’ve lost instead of getting a No Contest, because you can’t retroactively call “I can’t fight on.” And instead of doing anything, Miragliotta just kinda of waited around for something to happen, giving Holland more recovery time (which is not allowed), all because Miragliotta had no interest in ever making a decision.
And that’s the biggest issue with MMA refs today. Because they have no accountability, their primary motivations are to not make fighters mad at them, and so, the bad refs default to doing nothing instead of doing their jobs, because they don’t want to impact the fight. Well, not enforcing the rules impacts the fight in a major way, and Kevin Holland has a loss on his record now to prove it.
“I was really bummed when we lost Fluffy off UFC Vancouver. But can we safely assume Anthony Hernandez would’ve done what Brendan Allen did to Reinier de Ridder x10? MMA math…”
In the words of the Kool-Aid Man, OH YEAAAAAAH.
Look, I am quite possibly the biggest RDR fan out there, but watching that performance showed Fluffy would’ve done terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things to “The Dutch Knight” on Saturday.
“With Zhang Weili vacating the SW belt to fight Valentina Shevchenko, is the time right for Joanna Jedrzejczyk to make a comeback?
Honestly, if Joanna did come back, I’d probably pick her to beat either Virna Jandiroba or Mackenzie Dern. That’s the state of the women’s strawweight division right now: it’s completely stagnated. Just look at the Top 15; most of the women there have been there for YEARS. What was once a premier weight class has turned into light heavyweight.
But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Joanna has been retired for three years, and she’s moved on. Sure, she might come back and win the title, but it wouldn’t be some triumphant story about persistence. This would not be George Foreman’s improbable second heavyweight title run. It would be overt opportunism.
Please stay retired, Joanna. You had a hell of a career already.
“Since we’re coming up on the 10yr anniversary of Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendez, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for the days when the greats defended their title in one weight division. Is there anyone among the current crop of champs, or even contenders, that you think will carve out their legacy the old fashioned way in one division? Would you rank them higher on the GOAT list than those who hop around—Conor, DC, Poatan, Topuria, etc?”
Ah, the good old days when champions used to, you know, want to defend the title they spent their life getting to. Sadly, those days are gone. But they might be returning in fashion sooner than you think. I have some hope that the shift to Paramount removes some of the champ-champ incentive and makes generic title defenses more appealing. But perhaps that’s just me being naive.
Anyway, as far as an actual defending champion, I think we’ve got three people who are in play for that fight now: Merab Dvalishvili, Alexandre Pantoja, and Tom Aspinall.
I’ve been critical of Dvalishvili, but one thing I’ll never criticize is the man’s commitment to his division. He point-blank said he has no interest in moving up, and he’s going for his fourth title defense this year. Dvalishvili has the best chance of joining the true GOATs of the sport, and I commend him for that.
Pantoja has already joined the illustrious four-title-defenses club, with a fifth planned for December. Should he get past Joshua Van, he joins a very elite group, and maybe the UFC runs him at Merab (they should), but he’s also pretty keen on doing the work of a champion.
Lastly, Aspinall simply doesn’t have any other options. Big Tom is too big to make 205, so he’s stuck defending at heavyweight for as long as he can. And I think that’s a pretty long time.
As for ranking them higher on the GOAT list, I already do. Defending a title 6+ times is significantly more difficult than winning titles in multiple weight classes. The old refrain in MMA is that anything can happen in four-ounce gloves, and that inherently makes title defenses challenging. Conversely, winning a title in two weight classes is difficult, but you basically have to get the opportunity and high roll once. That’s why there have been 10 two-division champions in UFC history, and only six fighters with six or more title defenses. It is simply much more difficult to accomplish. Just ask all-time greats like Alexander Volkanovski, Israel Adesanya, and Kamaru Usman.
“What do you think a champions pay will look like once PPV is gone? Will champions have any negotiating power with PPV sales not in the equation?”
They didn’t have any power anyway, so nothing changes in that regard. That’s the thing about a monopoly (or monopsony): it gives all the power to one party.
When the new TV rights deal was announced, Dana White suggested there would be a change coming to pay as a result, and so it does seem like a pay increase is coming to offset this, but I have no idea what that actually looks like. My best guess is that, for all but a very, very few fighters, the UFC likely pushes toward a tiered pay structure across the board, somewhat akin to their Venum sponsor deal for fighters.
Again, this is pure speculation, but my best guess is that the end result is that all fighters get a slight pay increase, but fighter pay as a percentage of revenue actually goes down even further. Because once a business has a set revenue stream, the only real way to increase profits is to lower costs.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong and every fighter is about to get paid millions. We will never actually know until the next lawsuit comes around.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who sent in tweets (Xs?)! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send your tweets to me, @JedKMeshew, and I will answer my favorite ones! Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane, just so long as they are good. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.
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