Issue 014

June 2006

By Grant Waterman

Think about it- picture someone who has refereed over 1000 fights, from raw novice to world titles. He must have seen it all. He must know every dirty trick in the book. Nope, and anyone who says they do is very naïve, stupid, or both. Mind you, there can’t be much I haven’t seen now. 

A referee’s primary concern is a fighter’s safety, but of course he is there to stop (or try and stop) any infringement of the rules. There are about 30 written fouls for most MMA shows, taking into account the differences between Pride, UFC, etc. So you’d think that after a few hundred fights a ref would be pretty sharp at spotting and stopping anything untoward. There are, however, so many variables it’s sometimes impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a referee’s job to enforce the rules and some of the bigger shows have instant video playback and I’m not making any excuses if you think you’ve seen me or another ref miss something in the past, but you may not have considered the infinite number of variables that can occur or the devious things some fighters get up to.

One thing I always say to people when they moan about some minor infraction that I haven’t penalised someone for is, ‘Did it change the outcome of the fight?’ I don’t recall a time when it would have. A referee should also be talking to fighters throughout a bout, guiding them from breaking the rules and warning them if they do.

All the fouls have different levels of severity and don’t always warrant stopping a fight, especially if by doing so the victim has an advantage taken away from him. I watched a fight once a few years back where a fighter was being armbarred. He kicked the face of the other fighter, which was a foul. The referee stood the fighters up and deducted a point from the guilty one. Now the fighter who broke the rules just got out of a finishing submission and back to his feet. He may have lost the round but he went on to win the fight. The referee should have made a mental note of the foul and then penalised the culprit only if he had managed to escape the armbar legally. If he had tapped, game over anyway.

Here’s another scenario for you. Under UFC rules, Fighter A shoots in to take Fighter B down. Fighter B lands a kick to Fighter A’s head. Fighter A has a knee on the canvas at the time the kick lands, so he is a ‘downed’ fighter. In the rules it states that it is illegal to knee or kick a downed fighter to the head, but amazingly the referee let’s the fight carry on. What happened? Is the ref corrupt? Is he blind?

Actually the ref here knows exactly what he’s doing. He saw that Fighter B’s kick was on its way before Fighter A was considered a downed opponent, i.e. before his knee touched the canvas. Fighter B was kicking a standing opponent but due to Fighter A’s timing, it landed while he was down. Technically this was not a foul. In cases such as this, the ref has really got to be on the ball to get this right, as he’s got very little time to make the correct decision.

A referee’s positioning is paramount during a fight. As the third man, you need to be in a position to pounce if needed yet not be in the way. You also need to be able to see what move is being set up and also if someone is about to tap out. Many submissions are on the opposite side to the tapping hand, which makes life awkward. Some fighters use this blind side to their advantage, and try to eye gouge and fish hook their opponent, which of course is not tolerated. More common in the USA is a technique known as the ‘Oil Check’ where one fighter will poke a finger up his opponents bottom orifice to gain an advantage (and a smelly finger). I’ve only encountered that once in the UK and it was a fight between two Brazilians. I wondered why one of them was smiling so much! 

Some teams get quite irate when they are penalised for a foul, while some humbly accept they have broken the rules. I’ve encountered some pretty aggressive chaps at times, which you’d think would be quite intimidating, as some of these fighters are world-class strikers and submission experts. Fact is though, if a referee doesn’t stand his ground in front of thousands of people and the TV cameras, he might as well retire there and then. Not only is his reputation on the line but so is the reputation of the whole promotion he’s working for. If you are right then you are right, that’s all there is to it. You want to take it further? See me after the show.

So how important is it to ‘play’ by the rules in MMA? I see some fighters so concerned with doing what they can get away with that they actually aren’t thinking about the tactics of winning the fight. I find it a bit disrespectful sometimes too. I mean, do you really think I’m not going to notice that your ankles are covered in grease, or that you’ve wrapped your hands to make them like bricks? OK, if you get away with something, good luck to you, use the rules to your advantage if you can, but MMA isn’t a street fight. It’s getting so much coverage in the media now, and the public are becoming more and more knowledgeable. If they see a fighter cheating and blatantly disregarding the rules, people will think he’s unprofessional and are they going to want to go and see him fight again? If you’re a fighter and you’ve cheated in the past and thought you’d gotten away with it, did you ever wonder why you haven’t been invited back?

So remember, The Ref is watching, and if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.