Herb Dean is consistently called “the best ref in MMA” by UFC president Dana White, so his assignment to ref the UFC 162 main event between middleweight champion Anderson Silva and challenger Chris Weidman is unlikely to make any waves. Dean getting the call to be the third man in the cage came down, along with the judging assignments, at today’s Nevada State Athletic Commission meeting.
Kevin Iole tweeted it out when it happened:
The UFC had stated prior to the assignments that they had no objections to any officials and the three judges and ref were approved by the other commission members.
Jarman has a history of questionable judging — mainly in boxing — including being accused of either being blind or on the take by Gabriel Campillo after she blatantly robbed him of a win against Beibut Shumenov. Despite that globally derided scorecard, Jarman continued getting bigger assignments, such as working UFC title fights like Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard in 2010, Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber, Carlos Condit vs. Nick Diaz, Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen II and got big boxing assignments such as Cotto vs. Mayweather.
Generally, Jarman’s name will appear on most fight fan’s lists of “worst active judges.”
Joining Morse Jarman on that distinguished list is Adalaide Byrd. One of Byrd’s most recent accomplishments is being the only human being on earth not related to Melvin Guillard to see Guillard beating Jamie Varner 30-27.
Still, this is the world of fight sports and bad judges get good gigs and they get them often, usually with the reasoning that their experience is somehow valuable, even if the experience came when getting things wrong.
Let’s just hope it’s not left in the hands of the judges.