John McCarthy: UFC not impressed with Mike Beltran's mustache

On the latest episode of Josh Thomson and Big John McCarthy’s “Weighing In” podcast, the pair were discussed referee stoppages when Josh brought up referee Mike Beltran’s interview with Ariel Helwani from a few months ago. Beltran said his most memorable fight was Thomson vs Diaz.

Big John then told a backstory to that fight. He said Beltran was extremely nervous because it was his first UFC main card fight. He had only worked previously in UFC as a judge, and referee for prelims only.

Josh said for some reason I thought Mike Beltran refereed a lot more fights in the UFC.

McCarthy replied with an interesting story.

You want to know the truth?” said Big John. “Here’s the truth … They didn’t like his mustache. That’s why you don’t see him traveling around with the UFC most of the time. In fact, now they make him tuck it in because they don’t like it. They think he’s trying to bring attention to himself, which he’s not.

“I’ve had major discussions with Mike, at one point I told him, I talked to some people in the UFC and they said, ‘Tell him to get rid of the mustache, we would love to use him in Mexico, he speaks Spanish.’ So I tried talking to him, I said, ‘Hey it’s just facial hair dude, cut it off, let them get to know you and you can grow it back.’ And he replied to me, ‘It ain’t f***ing happening John.’ So I said it’s facial hair, he said ‘I’m a grown-ass man, ain’t no one going to tell me how I can look. So I looked back at him and said, You know, you’re right. I’m not going to tell you to do that ever again.’”