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Dan Hardy Argues With Referee Herb Dean Over Alleged Late Stoppage in UFC on ESPN 14 Fight
Dan Hardy was not happy about how long it took for Herb Dean to stop the Francisco Trinaldo vs. Jai Herbert fight at UFC on ESPN 14. Hardy and Dean appeared in a video posted by the MMA Pursuit Instagram account in which the former UFC fighter and color commentator lit into Dean about his perceived failure to step in and stop the preliminary card fight during the third round when Herbert was sent to the ground and appeared to be incapable of defending himself. Herbert quickly proved unable to defend himself and Dean then called the fight after a few more punches from Trinaldo.
MMA Weekly reports that Hardy and co-commentator Paul Felder were very critical of Dean not stopping the fight earlier, and the video was posted later of the two having a heated argument over the matter. You can see that below, as well as a video from Dean defending his work at the show.
Dean said in his defense, per the site:
“What I really want to get into right now is during the match someone yelled out, ‘Stop the fight.’ It’s really interesting because there’s only professionals there and not one fan in the building. Everybody has a job there, everybody knows what their 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 is taking too much damage. There are 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 them, they know about them, 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 who did it because I was looking at the fight and I had heard it, so I assumed it was either of the two people authorized to do it, the doctor or the corner. After the match I followed up, I asked the physician, he said, ‘No, that fight was fine. You were doing perfectly fine with everything you did in that match.’ I didn’t get a chance to ask his corner, but I asked the inspectors, who are in charge of his corner. They said, ‘No. The corner did not yell out to stop the match.’
“That means it was someone else, someone else there to do a job. This is a very dangerous thing to do. 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 – there’s a chance you could bring in information that could do the fighter a disservice.”
Hardy has also posted a response, the text of which you can see in his post at the bottom.
