Henry Cejudo urges referees to take accountability for their mistakes.
Herb Dean has been under fire for various mishaps during fights he’s officiated over the past few weeks. It started with Alex Pereira‘s interim heavyweight title fight against Ciryl Gane at UFC Freedom 250, where Pereira accused Dean of missing numerous illegal shots to the back of his head which lead to him getting stopped in Round 2. Pereira blasted Dean, and continues to campaign for him to get fired.
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Andre Fili complained to Dean for also missing illegal shots to the back of his head when he was finished by Vinicius Oliveira at UFC Fight Night 279. Then, most recently, Michel Pereira went off on Dean for not deducting any points from Shara Magomedov in their UFC Fight Night 280 co-headliner in Baku. Pereira lost the fight by unanimous decision, where he was kicked in the groin, poked in the eye, and continuously had his hair bun pulled – all which received warnings, but no point deductions.
John McCarthy came to Herb Dean’s defense over the “Poatan” controversy which irked Cejudo.
“If Herb Dean is the standard of officiating at the highest level then that is some sh*t, bro and something has to be done,” Cejudo said on his “Pound 4 Pound” podcast with Kamaru Usman. “It’s true Kamaru, it’s true. I can see the Pereira a little bit, there is about two, three fouls. Alright, man. You’re moving, blah, blah, blah. But now hair grabbing where a hand is coming in, there’s hair being pulled and that’s an ‘accident?’ That is absolutely bullsh*t, and I’m going to tell you why.
“Us as fighters, we lose half of our damn pay when we lose, if that deduction was to happen, which it was two hair pulls and an eye gouge in Round 3, that should have been two points. You know what that does? That puts Pereira as the winner. That means he goes home in Brazil, a third-world country, where he’s able to give a better life to his family, but you know what happens? He gets deducted half of what he was supposed to make because the referee did not have the balls enough to actually stop it. It’s f*cked up. If he’s the gold standard of what officiating is, bro, then this whole game is a f*cking joke!”
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Cejudo’s final UFC fight saw referee controversy, but it was Jason Herzog this time. Cejudo lost a technical decision to Song Yadong at UFC Fight Night 252, where he was poked in the eye towards the end of Round 3, but chose to complete the round after taking the full five minutes to try and recover. At the end of Round 3, Cejudo said he couldn’t see, resulting in the fight going to the judges’ scorecards where Song was declared the winner. Cejudo was upset that Herzog did not dock a point off Song.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Henry Cejudo: Herb Dean being gold standard for referees is a ‘f*cking joke’
