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Veteran MMA referee Dan Miragliotta has been in the center of several controversial calls in the sport, and he found himself in the middle of it again with last Saturday's UFC 142 co-main event between Anthony Johnson and Vitor Belfort.
Several seemingly quick stand ups led to Johnson tiring out rather quickly after a brutal weight cut that led to him severely missing weight on Friday. Belfort then pulled off a submission win, leading to Johnson being released on Sunday.
Some fans have gone so far as to accuse Miragliotta of intentionally standing the fight up early in those spots specifically to take away Johnson's key method of winning the fight, even suggesting he was influenced by the UFC to do so in order to punish Johnson for missing weight as badly as he did. But in an interview with MMAJunkie.com this week, Miragliotta completely scoffed at the idea.
"The UFC never talks to us," Miragliotta said. "You go out there, and Marc Ratner is the one that's responsible for us. We never talk to Dana or Zuffa or any of the other guys. I may have talked to Dana once or twice since I've been doing this. They don't bother us.
"Never, ever have you ever heard the UFC grab an official and say to them, 'Let's change the criteria,' or, 'Let's do something different because we need to keep the fans happy.'"
Miragliotta instead laid out the reasons why he decided to stand the fight up in the sports he did.
"If there's two guys on the ground that aren't doing anything or if they're in a takedown position and they're just very tired so they're leaning against each other and they're not going for a single-leg or they're not trying something different to change their position, I give them some time," Miragliotta said. "I warn them, and then I'll separate them."
"[Johnson] established position and then just held his wrist and laid on top of him. He had that one real nice, heavy punch that kind of busted up Vitor's face in the very early beginning of the first round, and then after that his takedowns had just kind of stopped."
Penick's Analysis: I don't believe Miragliotta purposefully stood them up early for any other reason than he felt Johnson wasn't doing anything, but that doesn't mean they weren't early or poor standups. He's not always been the best referee, and he has made mistakes in the past. It can be argued that he made mistakes in this fight, and he'll argue he just did what he felt was right, but I'm not on board with the conspiracy theories about the fight.
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