Herb Dean defends himself after receiving backlash for controversial stoppage
Referee Herb Dean received criticism from the MMA world last night after stopping the fight between Francisco Trinaldo and Jai Herbert late at UFC on ESPN 14.
Herb responded to the criticism and stated he saw no issue with the stoppage.
Commentators Dan Hardy and Paul Felder both called for the fight to be stopped after Jai got dropped and ate several unanswered punched before Herb stopped the fight.
Dean responded and detailed what he saw happening in front of him.
“There’s a fight that some people said could have been stopped earlier, think it was stopped late. By no means was that a late stoppage,” Dean said in a video posted to his Instagram page.
“Anyone who believes or not is maybe just following because someone with a microphone says it’s a [bad] stoppage. But if you know anything about fighting, a fighter got hurt, fighters get rocked all the time but we’re looking at his actions. He’s tracking his opponent. He knows where his opponent is. He’s put both arms in between him and his opponent. He’s lifted his leg up, head off the mat. He’s doing everything I can ask for him to do to stay in that fight. There wasn’t a bad stoppage.”
Dean defended his decision and also took aim at the person sitting cage side who was shouting at him to stop the fight.
Dean never addressed him by name but Dan Hardy can be see standing up from his seat and shouting “stop the fight” at the referee.
“During the match, someone yelled out ‘stop the fight,” Dean said when addressing Hardy. “This is really interesting because there’s only professionals there. There’s not one fan in the building. Everybody has a job there, everybody knows what they’re job is and they have specific duties. I have a job to referee the fight. One of my duties is to stop the fight when the fighter’s taken too much damage.
“There’s two people who are authorized to advise me during that to maybe yell out those words ‘stop the fight.’ There’s one, the physician — we have a ringside physician who knows more about the physical body than I do. He’s there to give me advice. If he can’t get my attention, maybe he might yell stop the fight. Then there’s the fighter’s corner. They train with him, they know about him, they know more things about him than I do. They may know something I don’t know so that’s why they would give me some advice to stop the fight. Ultimately, to stop the fight is my decision.”
“I don’t know who it was that did it cause I was looking at the fight but I heard it,” Dean said. “But I assumed that it was either the two people authorized to do it — the doctor or the corner.
While still avoiding Hardy’s name, Dean detailed why someone shouting at him during a fight is such an unprofessional act.
“This is a very dangerous thing to do,” Dean said. “If you put on your Superman shirt and decide that you’re the smartest person in the room. Smarter than the physician, smarter than the corner who works with the guy and smarter than the referee, you’re doing a chance that you could bring in information that could do the fighter disservice. I’m looking at the match, I believe I’m getting information from the people qualified to do it.
“Under no circumstances, even I as a referee, get up and yell and tell another referee to stop the match. If I were to do that, I would know it would be a situation where I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. I know that there could be consequences that you’d never see me in that position again but I would sleep well knowing that I did that.”
“If you open your mouth and yell the words ‘stop the fight’ it could easily be mistaken for the people who are officially qualified to yell stop the fight,” Dean said. “It should never be done.”
At the end of the fight, Hardy also confronted Dean as he was leaving the octagon. Following the event, UFC officials said they would be investigating the incident.
