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John McCarthy is one of the most respected referees in MMA. Whenever there is a difficult situation, he is the man to come to.
Saturday saw one of those tricky situations at UFC Vegas 38. An accidental clash of heads saw Kevin Holland take a headbutt from Kyle Daukaus. Kevin Holland was dropped instantly.
The fight continued and Kyle Daukaus was able to secure the submission finish. The bout was eventually ruled a No-Contest but there was plenty of controversy around it.
Many felt the referee should have stepped in right away to give Kevin Holland time to recover, others argued it should have been stopped instantly.
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John McCarthy spoke about the subject on his podcast ‘Weighing In‘ where he spoke about the situation.
“The real telling part was, you don’t know what the referee sees,” McCarthy said (transcription via MMAFighting). “So I’m looking at it and I’m like, that one you should have seen. Based upon where you were at, the position he was at, and the way that Kevin fell when they came apart. He went face first, he was out. When he hit the ground, he woke up. It was like getting punched. He got hit on the jaw, it wasn’t like it was his forehead or anything like that, and it snapped his head. He was not in any way prepared for that and it put him out. But the telling part was when Dan said, ‘I saw it but I rushed in there, and then he started fighting.’ This is where all, all, MMA referees make mistakes.
“This is not, ‘Oh, he’s fighting, let it go.’ You don’t do that because if you see the headbutt – many times you’ll see a head clash and neither guy responds to it at all. So instead of stopping the action, if there’s no cut, no damage you can see, you just come close to them and say, ‘Watch your heads inside,’ or something to that effect because you can see it did not affect either fighter. But if you have anything that shows a guy had an effect – and a guy getting knocked down, if you say, ‘I saw that was a clash of heads’ and you see a guy getting knocked down – it’s time to go stop time, no matter that he comes back out of it. I’m gonna get him up, I’m gonna take him over to the corner and let him clear out the cobwebs if there is that there, and then I’m gonna have the doctor look at him and if the doctor says he’s okay, we’ll put him back into the fight…”
The controversy also stemmed from the fact that the fight continued despite the illegal blow and Kyle Daukaus obtained the finish. John McCarthy explains that instant replay is used correctly in a situation like this.
“Now in the state of California, we can go and look at that instant replay and reverse it,” McCarthy said. “Same as now with what Nevada has implemented with their ringside official being the replay official. They handled this, and it’s okay if it takes more than one person to come up with the idea of, ‘This is the direction we need to go,’ as long as that direction is the right direction for the fighters. So I’m very happy that they have Herb being that replay official. I’m happy that you saw Jeff Mullins, who is in charge of the fight for the state of Nevada, he was definitely a part of it and talking to them, you saw other officials coming in and giving information about what they saw, which in the end forced or made, because we kind of thought that Dan was gonna go with, ‘Nope, I’m gonna leave it the way it is,’ but all of that input told him, ‘No, I need to make this a no-contest,’ and that was the right call for what occurred in this fight.”
“Kevin Holland did not deserve to lose the fight based upon being hurt by a clash of heads. That’s not within the legality of the sport and so he shouldn’t lose based upon the injury that he suffered and the damage that he suffered from that which put him in a situation where the choke made him tap later on. So in the end, the right thing was done and that’s good for the sport of MMA…
“I thought overall, great job by the state of Nevada and the athletic commission in allowing all those people to come together and to talk about what’s the best thing, not only for the fighters but for the sport.”
