Dan Miragliotta arguably had one of his worst nights at the office during UFC Vancouver when the veteran referee made a glaring error by stopping a fight three seconds before the end of a round and then declaring that the action would continue.
The debacle unfolded after Kyle Nelson put Matt Frevola on the canvas and started blasting away with some vicious ground and pound. It appeared Frevola was done, so Miragliotta stepped in to stop the fight just before the horn sounded to end the round.
But Nelson’s celebration was short lived as Miragliotta claimed he was just separating the fighters at the end of a round rather than calling for a stoppage but replays showed very clearly there was still three seconds left on the clock when he got between Nelson and Frevola. The egregious error earned Miragliotta some boos, but he still stayed working other fights on the card, and it’s highly unlikely he’ll face any repercussions for the mistake.
“These commissions, what are they doing?” UFC legend Matt Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer about the lack of oversight when it comes to referees like Miragliotta messing up. “Really what are the commissions doing? I don’t know what their job is. The promoters have to pay them, they work for the state. I know technically what their job is. They should be making sure the promoter is doing their job, and the fighters aren’t getting ripped off, and the referees are legitimate referees and the judges are legitimate [judges].
“What the f*ck are they actually doing? I don’t think they’re actually doing anything. I think they’re doing what the f*ck they’re told by the UFC primarily, or TKO so to speak, and they’re all bought and paid for.”
While Brown concedes that referees have a particularly thankless job that largely goes unnoticed when they make the right calls versus the moments that get amplified when something goes wrong.
But Brown also knows referees and judges hold an immense amount of power over a fight and a fighter’s career, which is why he wishes they had to face the same level of scrutiny as the athletes they’re overseeing.
“It’s got to be a repercussion,” Brown argued. “It doesn’t even have to be, depending on the number of times, have to be that severe the first time. But you’re affecting people’s lives. You remember my fight with Pete Sell. This has got to be one of the top five egregious reffing moments in history. I have no hate for Yves Lavigne or anything. I think he’s a good person. I think he meant well, but that was just absolutely f*cking horrid. How many punches did Pete Sell, who is already punch-drunk enough to start with, all respect to Pete, love that guy, but he’ll admit he’s taken a few shots in his life. He did not need the extra shots.
“I’ve said it many times before, in that particular fight with me and Pete Sell, what if he just threw a Hail Mary and knocked me out? I don’t think that was going to happen. I’ve got a pretty good chin. I think I was fine but that happens. Crazy things happen. If he threw that Hail Mary and knocked me out, now my life is affected. The rest of my UFC career could have been vastly different. When I’m fighting a fight that I thought was already stopped. That’s just one example, but I’ve never heard of a repercussion towards a referee.”
Perhaps the biggest example of a referee facing blowback from repeated mistakes is Steve Mazzagatti, who routinely got called out by UFC CEO Dana White for the way he called fights when serving as the third man in the octagon.
White’s opinion reverberated so loudly that Mazzagatti eventually stopped appearing on major UFC events, but there was never an official position from any athletic commission that some sort of action was taken against the referee.
“Even that, was that because the commission stepped up and said hey we’re done with this or is that because the UFC, particularly Dana White who clearly didn’t like Mazzagatti, was like ‘hey guys, f*ck him, we don’t want him no more’ and they’re like whatever you say, King Dana,’” Brown said.
Brown truly believes that speaks to a much larger problem plaguing the sport because Miragliotta’s mistakes, which also includes stopping two fights early at UFC Kansas City back in April after hearing a clapper that actually signifies 10 seconds left rather than the end of a round, have never really come back to haunt him.
“This is my point. What are these f*cking commissions doing?” Brown said. “Are they working for the UFC or are they working for the people? As far as I can tell, they’re supposed to be working for the people. They are government employees, they’re getting paid with our tax dollars, and I think they make some percentage of revenue from events that happen but ultimately they are public servants. What the f*ck are they doing?
“The fact that they’re public servants, politicians, pretty much answers the question. They’re in the public space and there’s just something that you cross that line into public space, you become a piece of shit and suck at everything and you are pretty much useless to humanity anymore.”
Between rounds this past Saturday night, UFC vice president of regulatory affairs Marc Ratner said that Miragliotta told him he thought he heard a horn sounding, which is why he stopped the fight between Nelson and Frevola.
Brown could only laugh at that suggestion, and in the end, Miragliotta just kept on working as if nothing actually happened.
“You can’t say you heard a horn. Are you just hearing voices in your head?” Brown said with a laugh. “You at least got to have a good excuse. Motherf*ckers, there’s got to be a consequence for everything. That’s how things are held to a standard.
“There’s no repercussion for what they do. There’s a huge repercussion for the fighter. I lose this fight, of course I get half my paycheck, that’s not the end of it. That’s a [loss] on my record for one. I now don’t get paid as much in my next fight … but it has way more repercussions than ‘you lost this fight, go onto fight another day.’ There has to be a balance the other way.”
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