UFC Ref on Knowing When to Stop Submissions

If you look at that last card that we did, I think I had three of the biggest fights of any UFC card. I did the Cub Swanson fight. What a fight that was. It was. Holy shit. I get about a 20 minute break, and then I do Kevin Holland versus Jacare. Woo! And then I finished my night with Tony Ferguson and Olivera. That was crazy too. So it's like, man. Three crazy fights. Three crazy fights. Yeah, God, that's a great card. That Kevin Holland KO was bananas. I think I've done, and we don't have anything to do with the assignments. The Athletic Commission gives us our fights. I've done Kevin Holland's last four fights. And I tell folks, I got the greatest seed in the world sitting there in the octagon with these men and women who go in there and do that stuff. But I fortunately have, with great mentors and guidance and opportunities for the UFC and some of the organizations, have gotten some of the biggest and best fights in the world. I'm very high on Kevin Holland. He's something special. He's good. He's got crazy power. And it's weird. To knock out Jock Ray off your back with a punch, like, what? And we sit there. And you look at both fighters and see what's happening. And I go, we went down to the ground. And you have to know your fighters to know where their expertise is going to happen. Well, he's a Travis Luter trained jiu-jitsu practitioner. And Travis Luter, one of the best American jiu-jitsu practitioners really ever. Travis Luter comes from a different era. But back in his day, the guys that I know, they're like, holy fuck, is he good? And it's great to see him there in the corner. You get to some time to chat with these guys and hear all the stories. He's out of Dallas, right? Yeah. When that fight happened, he's on his back and he throws that first punch. And I go, OK, this is going to be a transition. I look at Jock Ray. And if you go back and watch the fight, he's actually rocked. When that first happened, we'll step a little bit closer. And by the time he throws the next three punches, and I'm stepping in to try and stop it, Jock Ray is out. And they'll concentrate on the fighter that wins. But one, you don't want a fighter to come back conscious and take you down to start to do something. Right, that does happen. And if there's a language barrier, so I'm sitting there telling Jock Ray, the fight's over, the fight's over. I say, stop, stop, stop, so there's no misunderstanding about what's going on. And I'm holding the Jock Ray and holding the fence because he's starting to come back coherent again. And I want him to understand that he's been knocked out. And he's like, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm going, no, man, you got knocked out. You've been out for a minute or two. Isn't that crazy? Everybody eventually starts to come back. They all think they're fine. People think that fighters, they're trying to cheat or something like that. You don't understand what it's like and you get knocked out. Especially fighters, when they come back, they think they're in the fight. Exactly. They'll try to take a referee down. They're holding on to pants legs. They don't even think that it's a pants leg. And then eventually they go, why is this? These are black pants. It's always what happened. What is this? What happened? They always say, what happened? Or they get the bright light of the doctor shining the flashlight in our eyes at what happened. One thing we've tried to transition doing, I've had some fighters get really hurt really bad. We normally keep everybody out of the octagon. But one thing we're doing is we're allowing a coach to come in with the doctor, with the inspectors, with myself, and give them a familiar voice. You get knocked out. You come back and here's Mark telling you, now the fight's over. You may not recognize. But if your coach is there in the corner saying, hey, such and such, you got knocked out. Calm down. It's fine. This is coach such and such. I'm here. We're finding that's calming the fighter down just a little bit. Obviously, medical protocols and safety, we've got to do all that. But I like doing that. I like asking one of the coaches to come in, stand off to my side, and kind of give them a familiar voice. When Olivera had Tony Ferguson in that armbar and he had his arm completely hyperextended and it looked like his arm was breaking, what was your thought there? Because some guys have stopped fights when a guy has a fully locked out armbar. And it's very controversial. Some people think you should just let it keep going. One of the best examples was Herb Dean with Tim Silvio versus Frank Mear. That went through my mind during the fights. And see, what a lot of people didn't understand at first is Herb is looking directly at his arm as he sees the snap. And heard it, too. Heard it. He heard the crack. Yeah. Now, he caught a lot of flack for that. He only did for a couple seconds. Once I got in the octagon and explained it, and explained it to the audience, because people were booing like crazy because the fight was top. Tim Silvio was like, what the fuck? Yeah. What the fuck? Meanwhile, his arm was trashed. Yeah, that adrenaline going, too. Well, his arm was gone. Yeah. I mean, it was. And then I explained it on TV. And then when I got into the octagon, and I said, I want you to look at something. Watch this. Watch this. And then you hear everybody go, oh! When you see his forearm bend in half. And then everybody's like, oh. So at that level, with the choke, I'll tell guys in a rule meeting in the back, I'm not going to stop unless you go out. You can have someone in a fully compromised position. Who was it? The Kiesa fight. He was fully compromised. But how good could it be? How long can he hold that? Can he turn his chin to the side and get out? Yeah, you got to let him go out. You got to let him go out. So we tell guys. But Kevin Lee has a nasty, rear naked choke. And he had Kiesa fully locked in. But even in that position. You got to let him go out. So I tell guys in my room, and we learn as we progress watching fights. We talk daily, weekly about stuff that we got to do. So I tell them in the back in the rules meeting, for a choke, at this level, I'm not going to stop it unless the fighter goes out. If it's any kind of other submission, I got to see a dislocation, separation, or it has to break. Or if you scream, and there's a difference between a scream and a grunt to get out of something. If you scream, it's a verbal submission. And we're going to stop it. That's a weird one, right? The screaming verbal submission thing is weird. Tony, man, that was. You could saw his leg off with a rusty fucking axe. That was beyond human. He will not tap. When Charles transitioned from across the chest to under the underarm, Tony grunted. Yeah. And he bared through it. Look at the hyperextension. I don't know what happened to his elbow. You can see my foot there. Look how close I am. So I'm doing two things. One, I'm looking for a dislocation, separation, or break. But I'm also listening to see if it's going to be a verbal, the cracking arm or verbal submission. He battled through that. And we got to be conscious of the time. So the 10-second clapper had already gone off. So I'm counting down in my head. And the goal is to write when that horn goes off. You'll see when we stop a submission from that, we go right to the pressure point, push back the opposite way, and take off the pivot point, and it's underarm to stop it. Because some guys are going to try to hold it for an extra second after the bail goes off. Right as that stops, I'm pushing on it and stopping it, also verbally telling the guy to stop. Because you don't want any extra damage after the bail. You know, I've had some. You remember Husamar Pajares? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so we saw, now I think he did a fight. Jake Shields or somebody like that. Was that loud noise all of a sudden? That thing? Oh, great. I think when he fought Jake Shields, there was some extra-curricular activity. That was with Kamora, and that was in the PFL. Yeah, he held onto a Kamora tap Jake, but then held it long. And then afterwards, there was a brawl inside the Octagon. Yeah, and I think I'd referee the fight right before that. And it's our responsibility as a referee to know your fighter. You got to. You know, we do. What I do is I look at the entire card, and I'll go back and try to look at their fight. So whatever I get assigned. And I don't know what I get assigned until I get there to know if anyone has any tendencies. You know, are they great on the stand up? Are they great on the ground? Do they have a tendency to foul? Because we got some guys that like to fight with their fingers extended a lot. And I put that into my rules meeting of, you know, wash your fingers. This is what is going to be, fingers straight to the sky or make a fist. Or if someone has a propensity to foul a lot, that may be something I'm going to watch out for. Now, when you see something like that, if you saw the arm break, you would have stopped it? I would have stopped it. You have to. Look how bad it looks. Yeah. It's so crazy how hyper extended that thing is. Yeah. Now, you got some folks that are super double jointed, and they will tell you ahead of time, hey, I'm flexibility. I'm double jointed. Do you remember Huyler Gracie versus Sakuraba? It was that with the. He got him into kimura as well. And he got his arm like way wrapped up behind his back. But Huyler has crazy joint flexibility. Like it's really nuts. And he was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. And he was furious because his arm was like Sakuraba. It was a catch wrestling guy. So he's got a lot of those like old school double wrist lock techniques that are really brutal in the joints. And he's got his arm like deep up high on his back. And he's twisting it. But Huyler was like, I'm fine. I'm not tapping. And he won't tap, which is crazy. And it depends on the level. So like, can we do tough enough to amateur fights there? Yeah, if he keeps going, you can see that's only the beginning of it. It got a lot worse. If you say Huyler versus. Yeah, sorry. I thought that was a little bit worse. No, that is the beginning of it. Yeah, like at the amateur level, somebody could be in a choke. And if it's compromised, we may stop the fight. Or if they get stuck in an arm bar or something, don't demonstrate the capability of it. Right, right, in the amateurs. Yeah. So this is Huy's buddy. That's Huy's. That's Huy's. This is a different guy. Huyler is much smaller. That's the problem with Sakuraba. Sakuraba is a big guy. And Huyler is fairly small. Huyler is like, I mean, he might be like 160, maybe. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free, only on Spotify. 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