Issue 168

June 2018

The making of arguably the best referee in mixed martial arts.

Marc Goddard thought he would be a professional mixed martial artist, but when, by chance, he stepped between two fighters one day, his life changed. That serendipity has been the sport’s gain, and it has seen him go on to become one of the world’s most respected officials.

Uncompromising and deeply in tune with the sport, Goddard has spent 15 years as an official. He sees it as a calling, having worked with Cage Warriors and BAMMA at home in the UK, and all over the world with many other organizations, including the UFC, for the last 10 years.

But now he’s in FO. He’s here to tell all about his life, his constant fight for excellence in his field where criticism is common and a controversial encounter with Conor McGregor.

I tell him: “Mr. Goddard, I expect you to listen to my questions at all times, answer them all fully and give the best possible account of yourself, and when I tell you to stop, you stop...” He laughs. Unflappable in the Octagon, he begins to open up.

You wonder if you have to be a control freak, of sorts, to be a referee. “Kind of, yes, it helps to be like that... and it fits my character, my personality, you do need to believe in control,” explains Goddard, a large man who will not back down and can quickly turn into a brick wall at work.

The 43-year-old didn’t know this about himself until the day he stepped in at the 11th hour to referee at an event. Just by chance. Until then, he wanted to fight.

Surprisingly, even though he has that distinctive curled-vowel lilt in his voice, bred in the Midlands of England, he was born in Glasgow, the middle of three brothers. Both his parents were Scottish. He lived there until he was 12 years old.

“I might sound English, but I’m definitely Scottish,” he says Goddard, admitting that life in Glasgow was far removed from where he lives now, in Birmingham, the city had its effect on him.

Fighting was normal for Goddard. Glasgow was, and still is, a notoriously tough city, and fighting was part and parcel of life growing up.

“Where we grew up – on a council estate in a tenement building – there was a lot of fighting. It was a rite of passage. No one kicked the s**t out of me more than my older brother. You had to fight for survival – kids are cruel and there was a pecking order. I remember all the aggression, and as a kid, I was scared of it and was the first to duck out of confrontation for no reason. I didn’t like that kind of thing but it was there in the schools and in the street. It was just normality.

“Like most boys in Glasgow, all I wanted to do when I was growing up was play football... All I remember was that I loved football growing up. It was the days of Gordon Strachan, Tommy Boyd and Paul McStay and the like... It was that era of men’s men in football. That was my influence at a very young age.”

Goddard reckons his life changed at the age of seven when there was an open funfair day at the local karate club in the park nearby. He saw karatekas kicking fruit o swords and was fixated. He still loved football, and later had trials with West Bromwich Albion and Solihull, but that day he was rooted to the spot watching martial arts in action.

Then came his move – with his mother – to Birmingham, which was a big change. Goddard’s love of football continued, but he began to join martial arts clubs, learning judo, jiu-jitsu and karate, influenced by what he had seen that day at the funfair, but he never settled deeply into any of it. Then, like many teenagers in the 90s, he got into music. “I spent significant years having a good time,” he laughs. Electronic music, jungle, house, he even started DJing at clubs in the city – Miss Moneypenny’s and God’s Kitchen.

Eventually training as an electrician, he settled into a working life, but still drawn to the gym, he continued dabbling with boxing and kickboxing, yet “never really stuck to anything” until he was 26. Goddard recalls it was an epiphany.

A neighbor in his 50s named Paul Harrison mentioned that he taught Japanese jiu-jitsu and asked if he liked fighting. Goddard was taken aback, but was intrigued when he produced a VHS of UFCs 2 and 3. “He told me to go and have a watch. It felt like having an illegal video at the time, but once I watched it, I knew it was for me.

“I believe your path is laid out before you and I was meant to meet this guy, and watch the UFC at that moment. There was this 170lb skinny guy called Royce Gracie, and my eyes were as wide as saucers watching it.” Goddard fell in love with grappling, and a couple of days later, he was enrolled at Harrison’s Tamworth dojo, and within a few weeks, he was addicted to the mats.

Harrison was, to Goddard, The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi. “I was a young athletic kid, a white belt, and within a couple of weeks, I was putting experienced people on their heads. I had found my calling.” From there, Goddard began to immerse himself in the UK’s developing MMA scene.

Goddard, a natural southpaw, developed his skillset and within a few months, began to compete and then to fight. It was the very old-school days. He went 7-6 from 2001 to 2007, fighting at heavyweight and light heavyweight.

He fought James Thompson twice. The first time they fought, Goddard took 265-pound Thompson down, and made the mistake of listening to the MC that Thompson had tapped. “I got up, like a fool, thinking I had won, and I then had this 120kg of ‘Colossus’ smashing me in the back.”

A rematch was in order. But he admits to encountering fear for the first time in that rematch. “I was genuinely scared that night and I wanted to get out of there,” he recalls. “I remember him steaming into me, and everything went out of the window.” He was beaten up in seconds.

Goddard was in pieces afterward, but conquered the fear he had experienced when he teamed up with coaches Steve Brindle and BJJ legend, Braulio Estima. Soon afterward, a new chapter in his life began, which took him by surprise.

“My opponent was injured and the referee hadn’t turned up, and they asked me to referee. It suddenly appealed, I said yes immediately, and that was the day my life changed. I took to it like a duck to water. I told the fighters to have respect in the rules meeting, I just took command, really...” Seeing the way he commands the cage now as one of the best, if not the best in the sport, it’s not hard to imagine.

“I just loved it that day. It wasn’t rehearsed, but it was just like a movie.

I care about people and fighters, and that’s why I think I was made to be a referee.

I enjoyed it so much, and afterward, so many people came up and said how good I was.” Goddard’s mind was made up. He threw his lot in with it.

Fast forward 15 years, and there is no person worth their salt in MMA who does not respect Goddard’s knowledge of the rules, and ability to look after fighters in the rough, brutal world of combat sport.

He has very strong views on officiating, too. His candor can rub some people the wrong way, but he has strength in his convictions, and careful analysis of his actions will invariably end up showing he always acts in the interests of the fighters and MMA itself.

“I don’t give a f**k what people think about me. I will always try to do the right thing,” he says. “I was the only guy in the early 2000s doing the right thing at the right time. It’s about integrity. I walked away from a lot of shows because I was not happy with the way the safety was, the way it was set up. I do IMMAF induction courses where I talk about safety and regulations in the sport. It’s fundamental and I believe in it deeply. I believe in certain ways and I will not change them. I’ve made mistakes in my own life, but professionally I will just not let it go.”

He knows because he was a ‘professional fighter’ in the early days of the sport. “You weren’t really earning a living. You were fighting, you were underpaid, but you loved it. We fought in leisure centers, in nightclubs, some events were dangerous in the early 2000s, there were often no medicals and you didn’t even see your opponents weigh in at some events. It was a very formative time. It was run very differently back then, it was very raw.

“Goddard had a few more fights after his refereeing career began, but was realizing that it was not for him. Officiating was his route forward. “There was an acceptance in me, realizing I was never going to be the best in the world, never going to be a world beater. I’d conquered my fears, I was two years getting over it, but I loved refereeing.”

He loved being with Cage Warriors in the early days, for example, when the sport was growing. “I was engrossed,” he says.

“I would not take s**t, I was enforcing the rules, and pushing safety standards.”

His work got him noticed by the UFC. The UFC’s head of the London office, Marshall Zelaznik, reached out to Goddard, as did the UFC’s regulations supremo Marc Ratner, and by 2008, he stepped into the Octagon for the first time, making his debut at the UFC 89 in his hometown of Birmingham.

“It was my first assignment. I did two fights on the main card, and it was so rewarding. I’ve never looked back. Apart from my children and my family, MMA is my life. I have a deep love for it, and it’s a passion that will never go away.”

From the ‘Wild West’ early days, through the years on the biggest stages, Goddard admits to having had “some weird and strange moments” while officiating, like the naked man jumping into the cage at a Cage Warriors show in 2006 who he had usher away, or the drunken ‘fan’ who invaded the cage and was literally picked up and thrown out by the third man. The strangest, he says, without a doubt, was just a few months back in Dublin.

Two weeks before this November night, Goddard had paused a fight in Poland to tell Conor McGregor to go back to his seat when he was prowling around the cage, shouting advice to teammate Artem Lobov.

He popped up once more in Ireland and caused an incident that ignited the online MMA community, leaping into the Bellator cage to celebrate with Charlie Ward. But Goddard hadn’t officially ended the contest and his attempts to remove ‘The Notorious’ were met with anger and abuse – he even put hands on the referee.

“I could never have seen it coming if I’m honest. I’ve known Conor McGregor from a young kid. I couldn’t believe when he jumped into the cage,” he says. “It hurt me, genuinely hurt me because I got him wrong. I’ve known John Kavanagh for 20 years, I’ve known Conor McGregor since he was a kid, I did his title fights in Cage Warriors,” expresses Goddard. “But you will not do that on my watch. I thought we were cool. He called me a rat into my eyes – that upset me. John Kavanagh could not look me in the face. I got it wrong. I thought Conor respected me.”

Goddard issued a long public statement a few days later, explaining his position, defending his reputation and his character.

The vast majority of fans sided with him, despite McGregor’s galactic stardom, crediting him for his class and composure. McGregor may have given him no respect, but the rest of the MMA world did.

He now insists the incident is over in his mind. A run-in like that would never affect the way he performs his refereeing duties. “There was no love lost, but I would still referee Conor in the same way, with the same respect and decorum and care about his safety,” he explains. “I knew him before he was a multimillionaire and global star and I will treat him the same way now as I did then. I didn’t want sanctions against him. I wish him nothing but luck.”

That incident hasn’t harmed Goddard’s standing in the least. Following the proud accomplishment of becoming the first Brit to officiate in Las Vegas a few years ago, his biggest drive now is to help the sport to develop around the world, helping to drive safety and officiating and professionalism wherever there is MMA.

His work with the IMMAF has been ground-breaking. The sport is globally evolving, but it is still young and requires development. Goddard, and those like him with the same passion, have huge roles to play. Having already trained some other leading names in the eld, he continues to y around the world offering lectures on safety and A1 officiating.

“Right now, we need to continue to make improvements,” he says. “We see the sport growing and evolving, but we tend to forget about officials. Just as the fighters, managers, promoters, agents, and business aspects are evolving, we need to keep up with that in offciating, and regulating.

“For me, some of the most fulfilling moments in the sport I’ve ever been involved in are passing on the knowledge

I have from 4,000 fights in 40 different countries for more than 15 years. I care about this sport and the better I can make it by playing my own small part in that, the happier I will be.”

Water finds its own level. And Goddard surfs the waves. Even in the face of animosity from the most popular character in the sport’s history, he commands respect from the rest of the MMA world. When he’s watching the action, fighters are in a safe pair of hands.