The ‘Great’ John McCarthy on Referee Dan Miragliotta’s Controversial Stand-Up at UFC Vegas 123: ‘It’s Not Your Job’

Dan Miragliotta was wrong, that’s what the “great” John McCarthy says.

On Saturday night, Miragliotta refereed the UFC Vegas 123 main event between Renato Moicano and Tom Nolan, where he made one of the most controversial refereeing decisions in recent MMA history. After Moicano dominated the first round with back control using a body triangle, he found himself in the same position in the second round against Nolan and appeared to be on track to take a comfortable lead in the fight – until Miragliotta inexplicably resisted the fight. After the stand-up, Nolan quickly injured Moicano, changing the momentum of the fight, leading to a third-round TKO victory for Nolan.

Afterward, Miragliotta was criticized by seemingly everyone in MMA, and on Monday, veteran referee John McCarthy was unhappy with Miragliotta’s performance.

“What is the purpose of MMA? The purpose of MMA is to show that your skills are better than your opponent’s,” McCarthy said on the Weighing podcast. “…If I can make my skills match yours, then that’s what MMA is. It’s not something for anyone.

“I love Dan Miragliotta. He’s a great guy, and I know he’s just trying to do what he believes is right, but the fact is there are times in MMA where we say to a fighter, ‘Hey, if you want to stay out there, improve your position.’ If you’re in guard, it’s a 50/50 position, so you can improve your position by moving to half guard. Because what you’re doing, you’re improving some of your skills – some of them disappear to a certain extent – but you’re also dismantling some of your opponent’s skills.

“If you have me in guard, you can throw armbars at me, you can throw triangle chokes; you have all kinds of attacks. When you lose that, and now you have me in your half guard, a lot of those submissions go away, so I’m taking away a lot of your offense, while I still have things to do. So we’re going to sit there and tell people, ‘Improve your position.’ I’ll even say it from half guard. If you don’t do enough in the fight for the fight to succeed, you’re going to tell them that you need to improve your position. In other words, I want you to work…

“But I’ve never made anyone lose control, because when it comes to regaining control, how can I tell you to improve? You’ve reached the best possible position in MMA. A position where your opponent has no chance of finishing you. …

“So you get to a position where your opponent can’t finish you, but you can finish your opponent, and that’s what our sport is all about. That’s the whole concept of MMA: being able to put yourself in a position where you can do damage to your opponent, but they can’t do damage to you.”

McCarthy has a long history with Miragliotta, as both have been part of the small refereeing community for many years, and while some suggest Miragliotta’s action was the result of boos from fans, McCarthy has a different perspective.

“When you look at what’s going on in Dan’s mind at that moment, I’m not really sure it’s really the crowd; I think it’s in his head, he’s looking, ‘I gave you a full ride, five minutes, basically, for you to support somebody,'” McCarthy said. ‘I gave you this full round, and you couldn’t finish it with this, and you came here and, let’s say I gave you now a half round…and you still haven’t finished this fight, I’m going to get to where, let’s change this so we can work towards an ending.’ It’s not your responsibility. It’s not your job. Your job is to be fair, and the real factor in all of this is that you’re being completely unfair to a fighter, because he’s doing things.

“If Moicano is sitting there, and he takes Nolan’s back and he gets into a seatbelt position, he’s got his body split, and he puts his arms into a seatbelt position, and he’s now holding Nolan tight against him, and there’s nothing happening other than the seatbelt… your job is to always try to work to finish the fight. If you go back and watch during that last minute, he was on Nolan’s back before the stand-up; he had to do. throws 20-25 strikes. Why is he doing this? He’s working to finish. Which one is going to cause Nolan a problem where he makes a mistake and now the choke sinks in?

“The only time we should be fighting a fight is when the person controlling the fight is the person blocking the fight,” McCarthy added later. “And I mean blocking it, to the extent that they’re not doing anything. They’re laying on their opponent in guard, or they’re just putting pressure on in half guard. But every time they regain control, it has to be so blatant – and I’m talking about four and a half minutes spent in seatbelt position doing nothing. OK, fine, I’ll get you up, because you’re not doing anything. All you’re doing is trying to let the clock run out so you can win a round depending on your positioning.

McCarthy is one of the most recognizable referees in MMA history and the man who literally wrote many of the rules that exist in the sport today. He also runs the sport’s leading refereeing and judging course, and he claims Miragliotta broke one of the cardinal rules he communicated to his course participants.

“You can’t make a bad fight good, but you sure can make a good fight bad,” McCarthy said. “I’m not saying it ended up being a bad fight; it was exciting with what Nolan did, but he had the opportunity to take positions he never should have taken. …

“Dan Miragliotta is a fantastic person; he’s been a fantastic official,” McCarthy added later. “We all make mistakes and we look back on them. I’m not sure he looks back on it and says, ‘Maybe I made a mistake.’ Maybe he thinks he’s right. And that’s okay, but you have to be right for the sport, and the sport tells you that in this position, it’s not the time to defend someone.