Bigfoot Silva: Bout stopped early, several blows illegal
Reffing mixed martial arts may be one of the hardest job in sports, but fighters still expect the people paid…
Reffing mixed martial arts may be one of the hardest job in sports, but fighters still expect the people paid to make decisions inside the octagon to do it correctly in fairly. At UFC 160 Antonio Silva was rocked by a Velasquez right hand, who immediately followed it with some hard shots to the head of Silva. Silva was not out, but the ref deemed that he was not sucessfully defending himself and called the bout, a decision Silva disagrees with:
“I do agree the fight was stopped too early,” Silva said in the event’s post-fight press conference. “My way of thinking is that the same that applies to athletes who are penalized when they do something wrong or illegal, should also apply to referees when they do something wrong. They, too, should be penalized.
“I don’t want to say too much, I’d rather you each just watch the fight’s playback,” he continued. “It’s clear watching it that I took several illegal blows to the back of my neck. The referee explained to me that the first illegal blow should be a warning that should be issued. The second should be penalized on points. In seeing the playback, you can see that I took several illegal blows to the back of my neck.”