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[Leucoethiops]

Source: mmabay

Kenny Florian blasts referee Steve Mazzagatti

UFC lightweight number one contender, Kenny Florian has recently lanuched a scathing attack against long time referee, Steve Mazzagatti, saying, “someone should have gotten him glasses for Christmas.”

Florian, apperaing on his usual slot on ESPN’s MMA Live, said:

“I think someone should have gotten him glasses for Christmas. I'll be honest, he really has been late with a lot of his calls, and it has been a consistent thing with him.”

Mazzagatti has come under criticism recently from UFC head, Dana White as well who singled out a number of “bad calls” at last weekends UFC 92.

This comes almost a year after Mazzagatti’s most high profile decision to stand Brock Lesnar up in his UFC debut, possibly costing the now UFC heavyweight champion the fight. Lesnar has since filed legal action preventing Mazzagatti from refereeing his fights in the future.

By Michael Pepper.

I actually think Mazzagatti's a pretty decent ref, BECAUSE he lets fights go a little bit of distance, and no ref is innocent of having never made a bad call. It's not an easy job.

[Fedorlei Gomipierre]

I hate Mazzagatti with a fucking passion and I think if tallied all of his bonehead calls, they would amount to much more than all the other mainstay UFC refs. It's not an easy call, but there seems to be a trend where a lot of pretty solid stars talk alotta shit about Mazzagatti.

That Forrest/Evans fight went on way to long(albeit that was only a few secs and strikes)but Griffin was clearly knocked silly, was no where near intelligently defending himself and we all though he was trying to tap, but in any case that bout was done.

All refs make mistakes, I remember when Baroni blew up on Larry Landless in particular, but I just feel that Mazzagatti always seems to intervene in fights where his actions make the complete difference in the decision/outcome or he just misses things blatantly or incorrectly. He fucks up alot.

[stun gun]

Al Turk was covering up all the time during the abuse, so I guess Mazzagatti saw it as the fighter was trying to "intelligently" defend himself.

Its a late stoppage, but it is not as bad as some people are making it out to be.

[pa99ortiz]

Tough call, refs make bad calls all the time in sporting events. Its just the way it goes.

[atj-lucko]

Mazzagatti is still better than 80% of most refs, epically those NC refs.

Bring back the stash back!!!

[2mcgrath]

Originally Posted by atj-lucko

Mazzagatti is still better than 80% of most refs, epically those NC refs.

Bring back the stash back!!!

i agree,he is one of the better refs out there

[terriblet]

Myself I would rather have a ref that doesn't stop the fight right away.How many times in the last couple of years have we seen a ref jump the gun and stop a fight prematurely? A hell of a lot more than refs that supposedly let fights go on too long! Although I do agree that Mazzagatti shouldn't have stood Lesnar and Mir up or deducted a point from Lesnar but IMO he's still better than a lot of the other MMA refs.

[carbondioxide830]

some are stopped too soon like karo/thiago (bash me, but im a karo fan lol) and some arent stopped soon enough like kongo's last fight. there are bad calls in all sports but i'd have to say mma should be different as it deals w/ a person's physical health. al-turke took alot of punishment from kongo and most of it was uncalled for as kongo obviously had it won after the elbow that split him open. something has to be done...i've always said big john was the best ever. i hope to see him reff'ing again in the ufc.

but hey, lets not just pick on the refs. my problem is w/ the judges...or more so the judging system. fix that first, then take care of the referees and such because i think controversial decisions are more important because there u have 2 guys fighting their hearts out and sometimes, the wrong guy loses and its fucked up because thats taking money out of his pocket that he should have won (hamill/bisping, gsp/penn 1, rampage/forrest) i know some agree w/ those decisions, but those are the ones that come to my mind that should have been more carefully evaluated by judges. fix the judging, then worry about refs, judges, etc.