Name: UFC Referee Mark Smith on Early Stoppages
Uploaded: 2021-02-03T00:23:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'UFC Referee Mark Smith on Early Stoppages' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'UFC Referee Mark Smith on Early Stoppages' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-03. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- You want your name to be called one time.
And that's when the announcer says,
"Referee in this fight is such and such."
You don't want any complaints other than that.
Because we know this is 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 you have an impulse.
Like, you don't know when to stop.
Like, is it now?
Is he okay?
Is he gonna 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!"
- It's, you know, it's weird.
'Cause our philosophy and, you know,
I primarily work with two of the commissioners,
Nevada State Athletic Commission in California,
two of the top commissioners 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,
you know, their ability to come back
and, you know, you gotta 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's judging is kinda hard,
but they kinda, they can hide.
Like, you're on TV.
- That's right.
- You know, 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 know, you gotta kinda stay away from, you know,
some of the social media criticism,
'cause you got someone there that may not understand
the detailed, you know, specifics of how we officiate
and what we do, and you're gonna have critics.
Not tell everybody, going into a fight.
Fans are gonna hate you or love you.
Half of the fans are counting for a fighter in the red corner,
half are counting for fighters in the blue corner.
And depend 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 wanna see people
get beaten almost to death.
They don't wanna to be stopped.
Even if the guy is covering up and in a turtle,
they think they shouldn't stop the fight.
- If you stop a fight while somebody is standing up,
you're just gonna get crucified for that, so.
- Well, there was a call, like with Max Holloway
and Calvin Cater, 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.
- I agree.
- I think 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.
- Right. - They've been doing this for so long.
- That's the gold standard.
- There's an eye of what they're looking at,
and it comes down to intelligent defense.
- Yeah.
- And that's not just holding your hands up.
That needs to translate into doing something offensive.
And if you could tell that a guy's 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,
or the fighters just get destroyed and they're gonna 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.
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