NJ, Cali: Palpable ref errors can be corrected

When Brazilian referee Eduardo Herdy robbed Drew Dober, and awarded the bout to Leandro Silva, the regulatory body in Brazil, Comissao Atletica Brasileira de MMA (CABMMA) said they did not have the authority to overturn the decision.

CABMMA said they follow the rules of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and that an official’s decision can only be overturned under very specific conditions:

1. The Commission determines that there was collusion affecting the result of the contest or exhibition;

2. The compilation of the scorecards of the judges discloses an error which shows that the decision was given to the wrong unarmed combatant; or

3. As the result of an error in interpreting a provision of this chapter, the referee has rendered an incorrect decision.

So unless someone bribed the ref, or someone added up the scorecards wrong, or a ref thought holding someone’s head from bottom half guard was an automatic win, the mistake stands.

However, Ben Fowlkes for MMAjunkie talked with two of the leading commissions, and it is not necessarily so cut and dried when an official makes an egregious error. According to New Jersey State Athletic Control Board counsel Nick Lembo and NJSACB commissioner Larry Hazzard, in NJ, something can in fact be done.

By New Jersey rules, the commissioner can overrule the referee if there’s a palpable error that’s occurred, Larry Hazzard, the commissioner of the NJSACB, told MMAjunkie. I don’t know about other commissions, but our rules already permit the commissioner that sort of supreme authority to overrule the referee, especially in the situation where the referee has made an obvious and palpable error.

(Silva vs. Dober) possibly could have been restarted very quickly, Lembo said. You weren’t dealing with a foul or something that caused an injury after the bell. That’s one where you could have conferred with the referee very quickly and restarted the fighters in the same position without causing a big disadvantage to one fighter.

Everybody may not walk away completely satisfied, but at least you would have the lesser of the evils, Hazzard said. You have the opportunity to at least make things halfway right. Maybe you won’t have a clearly declared winner, but in this particular case the loser would not have been the loser. It at least could have been a no-contest, no-decision.

The relevant regulation is N.J.A.C. 13:46-8.30 Change of Decision by Commissioner, which states that the Commissioner may in discretion change a referee’s decision if in his judgment a palpable and self-evident error has been committed (effective June 3, 1985).

Fowlkes also spoke with California State Athletic Commission Executive Director Andy Foster, who said that while his interpretation of state law does not allow a ref’s call to be overturned, there is another possibility – appeal.

I don’t think I’ve got those powers spelled out, said Foster. I just don’t have that.

Something like this, which is a matter of judgment, I would take to the commission and let them look at, Foster said. They’d get to watch the tape and see what they thought. I can’t speak for them, but they’d ask my recommendation, and not taking anything away from either fighter, but you want to get the right guy. Sometimes we miss the forest for the trees when it comes to this stuff. The goal is to make sure the right guy wins.

Amen.

In his latest Combat Sports Law blog, Erik Magraken suggests that the governing regulations be changed everywhere to make the interpretation explicit.

Amen to that, too.