Steven Marrocco of MMAWeekly has obtained a copy of the letter issued by the management of Jon Jones that seeks to have Jones’ decision loss to Matt Hamill reversed. Jones and Hamill fought December 5th on The Ultimate Fighter Finale where landed a series of illegal 12-6 elbows from the mount position that served as the impetus for referee Steve Mazzagatti to disqualify Jones and award Hamill the win.
The complaint does not dispute that Jones violated commission statutes by throwing multiple “12 to 6” downward elbows, but claims the blows did not render Hamill unable to continue.
“The criteria that was used to determine whether or not Mr. Hamill could continue was flawed,” the letter states.
The complaint claims Mazzagatti violated a “well-established precedent” to involve ringside physicians in deciding whether Hamill could continue or not.
The letter included a statement from Hamill issued five days after the fight where he said he dislocated his shoulder when Jones tossed him to the ground and, “knew it was probably over at that point.”
“At minimum, Mr. Hamill should have had (an) opportunity to clearly understand what was being asked of him and given the ability to respond,” the letter states. “If allowed this basic right, we believe, based on Mr. Hamill’s own admission, that his shoulder injury would have precluded him from continuing, not the perceived foul.”
Ciatoli and Marino said the vision-blurring cuts were caused by 23 legal elbows that Jones landed from the mount position, not the illegal blows.
The complaint asks the NSAC to schedule a hearing on the matter in the event that the decision is not changed.
Payout Perspective:
The complaint really brings to light the importance of being able to use instant replay correctly. The allegations may or may not come to have any merit, but this should serve as a warning to the MMA community that, just like in any other sport, video replay is a tool only as accurate as its handlers.
In this case it wasn’t necessarily how the tool was used, but the way it may have disrupted the process following the use of illegal blows in a match.
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An issue of this ultimately reflects upon the standard of officiating that is set by the sport, which makes it even more confusing as to why an official like “Big” John McCarthy is still not licensed in Nevada or allowed to officiate UFC competitions.
FanHouse recently spoke to Keith Kizer, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, about McCarthy’s status in the state, and it appeared as though the commission was in no rush of reinstating arguably one of the greatest referees in MMA history.
“We have him and about 40 other people pending. It’s just a matter of when there’s the next opening and then we look at the applications and go from there,” Kizer said.
“There could be an opening in a month; there could be an opening in about three years.”
McCarthy retired from refereeing in December 2007 to pursue a career in television. During his time away from the cage, he criticized some of the decisions made by the NSAC with regards to judging and officiating, and some believe that is why he has yet to be reinstated by the commission.
That tragedy of this situation is the fight should have been stopped before it got to this point. Hamill was being dominated like he never had been before. Whatever Hamill was doing to “intelligently” defend himself wasn’t enough IMO.
It’s a joke that amazing referee’s like Big John are kept out due to bureaucratic red tape and/or the secret ability of promoters to play favourites and pick the refs, when people’s safety and livelihood are in jeopardy whenever a poor decision is made.
Seriously though, how many more screw ups by Steve Mazzagati before someone gets seriously hurt. Just a few UFC events ago he let someone (Chris Leben against Jake Rosholt?) who was tapping go unconscious for some idiotic reason, rather than stop the fight. This referee is an accident waiting to happen.
This whole scenario brings back shades of Kevin Burns winning against Anthony Johnson by illegal eye poke. How many awful calls does that make it for Steve now?