NSAC Head Calls Out Judge For Bad Call in UFC 209 Main Event

The executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission appeared at the post-event presser at UFC 209 to reaffirm Tyron Woodley’s majority-decision win and state that a judge for the bout made a bad call in the final round. MMAjunkie reports that Bob Bennet said without naming the judge that the the 10-8 score of Woodley over Thompson, which came from Sal D’Amato, “just missed it.”

“Thank God it didn’t affect the overall outcome of the fight,” Bennett told the site. Woodley won via a majority-decision win with two 48-47 scores. Dana White said after the event that he scored the fight three rounds to two for Thompson.

While commission officials rarely talk to media directly after a fight, Bennett said that he made the decision after receiving texts from an unnamed party and chose to appear “just out of respect to the promoters and the fighters.”

Bennett called D’Amato’s final 47-47 draw score “an anomaly” and said that the topic had been addressed before the fight, but denied that the talk had altered the way judges would score. “These judges, just like in the boxing events, you’ve got to score it the way you see it. I don’t put any pressure or stress on them; it’s totally incumbent upon them.”

He added, “The one judge that had it 10-8 – we went over it in the debriefing, and that 10-8 was unacceptable. Not that it would have affected the outcome of the fight, but just to share it with you, we certainly strive to do the best we can – we don’t always succeed – and that judge should have scored that round 10-9…You can’t have a three-point swing in 50 seconds….Usually, he’s spot on. In our opinion, which we do for a living, and we don’t have a vested interest in who wins or who loses, we had Mr. Woodley winning 3-2.”