On the night of September 17, the UFC Fight Night 227 tournament took place in Las Vegas, which was dedicated to Mexican Independence Day. The event included a title rematch between Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko, another fight between Roman Kopylov and a match between two welterweight fighters, Kevin Holland and Jack Della Maddalena.
However, there was one more fight that will definitely remain in the memory of the fans and in the history of this tournament. The fight between Edgar Chaires and Daniel da Silva Lacerda remained undecided. No, it was not declared void, but it was left without a decision. This is a refereeing error that Chris Tognoni made. The fighters joined in a clinch in the first round, but very quickly Chaires brought his hand to his opponent’s neck and began performing a guillotine. The referee was nearby and periodically checked to see if Lacerda had fallen asleep and what his general position was. At some point, the Brazilian suddenly went limp and Tognoni immediately stopped the fight. However, it turned out that Daniel was fine, he didn’t faint, and he didn’t understand at all why his opponent was celebrating his victory.
After some diligence, it was decided to deprive Chaires of the victory. After this, a dispute traditionally broke out over how correctly the judge acted. For example, Daniel Cormier agreed with the final decision. The former two-division UFC champion said Lacerda simply relaxed his body to help get out of a difficult situation, and at this point he shouldn’t be showing any signals to the referee. Fans simply criticized Tognoni for rushing and not properly evaluating the episode.
The main and most interesting events of UFC Fight Night 227:
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UFC Fight Night 227: Kopylov destroyed Fremd! Shevchenko could not return the belt
This is the second case of its kind in the last three months. At UFC Vegas 75, Keith Peterson stopped the fight between Daniel Argueta and Ronnie Lawrence in an absolutely identical situation. The referee decided that Lawrence had fallen asleep and moved his opponent away from him. He later admitted the mistake, apologized and the fight also ended without a decision. What these cases have most in common is that neither here nor there did the fighter who was subjected to a choke indicate that he was surrendering. Peterson received a lot of criticism back then. In particular, from Cormier himself: “This is really absurd, a terrible mistake. Something needs to be done about this. That hand was ready to play and all Peterson had to do was wait for the change.”
For the UFC, a repeat of this situation is a big problem. The world’s top promotion cannot afford to be discussed more often in the context of serious mistakes rather than beautiful fights. Furthermore, even Peterson’s case is far from the first. In 2015, in the fight between Drew Dober and Leandro Silva, referee Eduardo Herdi prematurely signaled the end of the fight. UFC president Dana White immediately after the tournament publicly criticized the judge’s decision: “One of the most serious referee errors in the history of sports. Everyone in this room and on this planet knows this sucks. I hope the result of the fight is canceled and we have a fair fight. I think this will be difficult to achieve because athletic commissions always protect their referees. But this time everything is so obvious that I don’t know how the result of the match will be. Anyone who plays the sport knows that Dober was no longer in danger. He came out of the clinch, was in a superior position, from where he could deal good damage or even finish the fight. I have nothing against the guy he won. It wasn’t him who stopped the fight. He won and is happy. But this stop is a piece of crap that needs to be fixed.”
Contrary to White’s words, the Athletic Commission changed the outcome of the fight, declaring it a no-win. Largely due to the fact that Herdy admitted his mistake. But the truth is that little has changed since 2015. Judges’ errors affect the outcome of fights; It is no longer enough for fighters to simply be better than their opponent. To some it may seem like two mistakes in three months is silly, but even that is a lot. We can also add an incident on Dana White’s Contender Series that occurred two weeks ago. Referee Kevin MacDonald stopped the fight between Sergei Sidey and Ramon Taveras too early. Dana White called it one of the worst stoppages in sports history.
Keith Peterson failed and deprived the UFC fighter of victory:
American collective farm. A clueless UFC referee stole a fighter’s victory
Of course, the judges in the octagon are far from the UFC’s biggest evil. Especially if you compare their mistakes to the mistakes of those giving the ratings. We saw a surprising example in the rematch between Shevchenko and Grasso. Michael Bell somehow saw the fifth round score 10-8 in favor of the Mexican. He was definitely no worse than Valentina throughout the fight, but he failed to win the five-minute round in devastating fashion. White criticizes the judges all the time and says that sometimes he doesn’t understand how they give the scores, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be fixed anytime soon. Let’s not forget that the referees are appointed by the Athletic Commission of the state in which the tournament is held, this is not the prerogative of the UFC. Well, commissions really like veteran judges who make mistakes regularly. And, unfortunately, little by little we are getting used to the fact that in every tournament we have reasons to talk about refereeing.
