UFC Referee Mark Smith on Early Stoppages

You want your name to be called one time. And that's what the announcer says. Refereeing this fight is such and such. You don't want any complaints other than that. Because we notice a lifetime opportunity for these fighters. We don't want to do anything negatively to affect them. So that's a good thing. Well, it's such a difficult job because in impulse, you have an impulse. Like you don't know when to stop. Like is it now? Is he okay? Is he going to be okay? Like sometimes fights get stopped early, and it is the worst feeling when a guy is kind of rocked. But then someone stops the fight and then the guy complains. And the crowd's like, boo. And you're like, shit. You know, it's weird because our philosophy, and I primarily work with two of the commissions, Nevada State Athletic Commission in California, two of the top commissions in the world. You don't want to fight to go too long to risk long term injury for the fighter. So there's that philosophy of maybe stopping a fight one punch too early versus one punch too late. Your goal is to stop it right on time. But it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point. Depending upon the history of the fighter, their ability to come back, and you got to make that subjective determination right away. When is the time to stop that fight? But man, it's the worst feeling in the world if you think you get to that point, you let it go too long. Or if you mistakenly stop it too early, oh, god, it's a hard feeling. And trust me. It's such a difficult job. It's so much harder than anything other than fighting. Like everybody else is judging is kind of hard, but they can hide. Like you're on TV. That's right. You're right there. If it happens and if it's you that makes a bad call, like all the hate comes your way. And you got to kind of stay away from some of the social media criticism because you got someone there that may not understand the detailed specifics of how we officiate and what we do. And you're going to have critics. I tell everybody going into a fight, fans are going to hate you or love you. Half the fans are counting for a fighter in the red corner. Half are counting for fighters in the blue corner. And depending upon the call you make, it may be the referee's fault. It may be the judge's fault. But your goal is to go in there and be as objective as possible. And fighter safety is always number one. Yeah, and some guys just want to see people get beaten almost to death. They don't want to be stopped. Even if the guy is covering up in a turtle, they think they shouldn't stop the fight. If you stop a fight while somebody is standing up, you're just going to get crucified for that. Well, there was a call with Max Holloway and Calvin Kater. There was a lot of people thought you could have stopped that fight standing up. But Herb was like, not quite. And I think it was the right call. He gave them, but it was touch and go. You could tell he was looking at Calvin very carefully. And there's that, you know, you obviously go to, there's no one better than John McCarthy and Herb Dean doing this. They've been doing this for so long. That's the goal. So their eye of what they're looking at, and it comes down to intelligent defense. That's not just holding your hands up, but that needs to translate into doing something offensive. And if you could tell that a guy is listening to your verbal commands and he's doing something to fight back, as long as he's showing some good cognitive skills and showing something offensive where he's not looking at long-term injury, there's a possibility of him letting that fight go. But man, if it's starting to stem on a 10-7 round where the fighters just get destroyed and they're going to get hurt, now it's our responsibility to step in with fighter safety. Yeah, it's, like I said, it's a very difficult job, but you do it well. You do it excellent. I try. You're one of the best. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free. Only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs, all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.