Fedor vs Dan Henderson and Herb Deans premature stoppage

No question about it in my mind. Herb Dean is an excellent referee but he got it wrong tonight. Fedor took one hard shot, rolled over to his back to defend himself, meanwhile dan henderson is throwing a couple shots that are missing the mark, and before fedor is given a chance to defend himself Dean stops the fight, and fedor immediately rises up onto his feet after the stoppage, completely ready to fight. No question about it, and I'm even more certain now that I'm watching the replays. This is 3 loses in a row now for Fedor, and it's an unjust one. I love dan henderson and fedor both, I'm big fans of both of them and to be honest I couldn't route for one over the other, but I hate to see a great fight stop the way it did. What was most surprising of all was mauro ranallo and frank shamrocks incompetence, saying that it was a good stoppage and justified. Bull, a fighter must be able to intelligently defend himself, but the referee must give the fighter a chance to do so first. Herb Dean is a great referee, but he has stopped fights in the past way too early, this is one of them.

Agree on early stoppage, but Fedor would have lost anyway, his career is over.

ma_sha1 said:

Agree on early stoppage, but Fedor would have lost anyway, his career is over.

Click to expand...

How do you know Fedor would have lost anyway? Anything could have happened had Fedor been given the chance to recover. Ever seen scott smith vs pete sell? Or recently Cheick Kongo vs Pat Berry? There have been many comeback victories, I'm not sure how you concluded he would have lost anyway. But I do appericate you posting in the thread, I was starting to think I might be the only MMA fan around here.

Premature stoppages are a fact of the UFC, referees dont always have the best angles and if a guy has his eyes closed for a second because he doesn't want to get hit on the eye-ball the ref cant tell if his eye's are rolling or not so they have to make split decisions and split decisions are always going to have flaws.

I'm amazed they get it as right as they do at times as most fights don't go over. I haven't seen a live one for a while but I'm churning through a series to 108 I think and I tell you one thing I would like to see is a lot more deductions handed out for fouls. This eye poking and knees to the groin should be wiped out with penalties.

This eye poking no-one should be reaching with their fingers extended, they should be warned for even doing so, its cuts but one inch to fild their fingers under and another is if they are trying to palm a head away they should be doing it like a strike or slap anyway.

The thing is these guys at the top of their game should be fighting out of skill not out of desperation. Maybe the UFC have done something about it by now, like I said I havent seen live for 2 years now.

Reading some of your responses compelled me to respond. Must give a fighter a chance to defend himself? Fighter closes his eyes to prevent from taking damage? Listen, when you fall face first into the mat from a punch and you don't move your arm to defend yourself you are out. By the book he made the right call. My personal opinion I'd wished he'd let it go a little longer as Hendo was a little sloppy with his shots and Fedor did snap out of it. As most agree Herb Deen is top shelf all the way and I think he made the "by the book" call and the right call. Again, as a fight fan I wished he'd let it go just a wee bit longer.