“He’s still making mistakes consistently,” Fight analyst Dan Hardy speaks on MMA referee Herb Dean and the current situation of poor refereeing in the fights
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Vyacheslav Kiselev- Dan Hardy- Herb Dean
It’s been almost 10 years since former UFC Welterweight Dan Hardy was forced to turn away from his mixed martial arts career due to his health conditions, relating to his heart issues. Regardless, the “Outlaw” was never away from the eyes of his fans around the world. Throughout the years, Hardy, the former UFC title challenger, has made a huge reputation out of his current job as a fight analyst.
Hardy was famously known for his UFC Segment titled Inside The Octagon where he used to break down a single fight for a long time, his breakdowns garnered as many as 3 million views in one of the videos. That’s how good Dan Hardy is as a fight analyst. But unfortunately, this relation with the UFC didn’t last for long.
WATCH! BT Sport’s Fight Analyst Dan Hardy on Herb Dean and the consequences of poorly refereeing fights
Back in July last year, we had UFC on Fight Island 3 event headlined by middleweights Robert Whittaker vs Darren Till. In many fights that happened in the fight card, one of them was Francisco Trinaldo vs Jai Herbert. Trinaldo landed a powerful left overhand that knocked out Herbert before he fell on the canvas.
But the officiating referee Herb Dean, who was standing right next to both the fighters, took his time to stop the fight while Trinaldo landed 3 more shots as he wasn’t sure from a close view if Herbert was out for sure. Nevertheless, Dan Hardy, from the commentary team shouted at the top of his lungs to stop the fight. Dean and Hardy had a brief, unfriendly exchange of words right after the fight. After this, the UFC released Dan Hardy as the company’s fight analyst and commentator.
Dan Hardy still believes Dean is still consistent with his complacency as a referee, he told this at The MMA Hour.
“My main focus is the fighters getting protection, and he’s still present at regular events and he’s still making mistakes consistently, he still waves off the fights at the end of the round. He still doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. It concerns me. It really does, because at some point, our sport is going to be negatively affected by someone not doing their job, and we’re all going to be impacted by that, and we’re all going to be saddened by it.”
“This weekend was a good example of that. We were close to it,” Hardy is referring to the UFC 267 fight between Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos vs Benoit Saint-Denis. The fight could’ve been stopped by the referee Vyacheslav Kiselev for the beating Saint-Denis was taking. But it wasn’t stopped and the UFC, as well as the MMA community, erupted over the official of the fight.
“Brian Ortega [at UFC 266], same situation. None of these people is going to be there in 15 or 20 years when these guys can’t remember their kids’ names. That’s the thing we have to not forget.” This fight, however, was refereed by Herb Dean.
Dan Hardy and many of the renowned MMA figures are just worried about the fact that the fighters are there to bang each other’s heads for entertainment but at last, they too are humans. For the purpose of safety, they should hence be properly controlled during the fights. If the authorities during a particular fight remain too complacent and less alert of the situation, then how are these fighters going to stay sane in the long run provided there were no limits to the danger they were put in?
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Abhai Singh Tanwar
(1386 Articles Published)