The best and worst from UFC on Fox 28

#1 Worst: Refereeing issues raise their head again

Referee Dan Miragliotta missed some apparently illegal blows from Jeremy Stephens

It seems like we can’t get through a UFC card these days without some kind of officiating issue. Firstly we saw Jorge Alonso miss a tapout from Ovince St. Preux that resulted in OSP passing out from a choke applied by Ilir Latifi, and then there was the mess that ended the main event. Jeremy Stephens dropped Josh Emmett with a left hook, and from there things got crazy.

Stephens pounced and finished Emmett off, but some of the blows he used – most notably a series of elbows to the back of the head, and then a knee to the head of the grounded Emmett – appeared to be illegal, but referee Dan Miragliotta allowed the fight to go on until stopping it in favour of Stephens seconds later.

You can’t fault Stephens – in that situation a fighter’s instinct takes over – but even if you agree with the idea that the elbows were legal as Emmett was a moving target, the knee is hard to excuse. Even Stephens doesn’t seem sure, as he stated post-fight that he was confused by Miragliotta’s pre-fight interpretation of the “new” unified rules. And if Miragliotta was confused then can you really blame him for this?

Emmett now plans to appeal the loss – even if realistically he would’ve been stopped anyway – and the whole situation feels messy. Basically the suits behind the Unified Rules need to sit down with all referees and ensure that they all know exactly how to interpret the foggy rules about knees to the head and strikes to the back of the head to ensure no controversy like this can happen again.