UFC Rio: Ref Eduardo Herdy makes a pair of epic bad calls

There have been two very terrible stoppages on the UFC Fight Night: Maia vs. LaFlare prelims by the same referee, for two totally opposite reasons. Eduardo Herdy will surely be heavily scrutinized after his decisions on the preliminary card in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

His first bad moment came in the Fight Pass portion of the prelims when Christos Giagos submitted Jorge Oliveira with a rear-naked choke in the opening round. Oliveira initially tapped multiple times on Giagos’ knee, and even UFC announcer Jon Anik said “There’s the tap” right away. Herdy didn’t see it, and Oliveira had to tap several more times before Herdy moved in to stop the fight. Oliveira was very close to going out cold due to Herdy’s inattentiveness/incompetence/whatever you want to call it.

So it wasn’t a good start for Herdy, whose only other UFC appearance was on a December show in Brazil. Herdy’s next act is one that ranks high on the list of worst officiating errors in UFC history.

Leandro Silva was working on a guillotine choke against Drew Dober. An arm-in guillotine choke from half-guard doesn’t exactly sound too threatening, does it? Dober was not only not in any sort of danger, but he was just about pulling his head free from Silva’s squeeze. Inexplicably, Herdy grabbed Dober’s left arm to see if he was still conscious, decided he wasn’t when he clearly was, and then stopped the fight, handing Silva a thoroughly undeserved technical submission win. All Dober was doing was positioning his left arm on the mat to get himself into a different position after escaping the choke. There was absolutely nothing in the choke. If you thought Yves Lavigne’s premature calling of Mac Danzig versus Matt Wiman was bad, this was much much worse.

So, to summarize, Herdy didn’t see a guy clearly tap multiple times and then stopped a fight when he thought a clearly conscious man was unconscious from a completely non-threatening arm-in guillotine choke from half-guard. Here was Dana White’s reaction to the end of the Silva/Dober fight:

Now there is a guy who should NEVER ref again!!!!

— Dana White (@danawhite) March 22, 2015

One wonders if tonight’s screw-ups will result in him being pulled from his remaining assignments.

UPDATE: Dober will receive his win bonus according to Dana White.

Just confirmed with @danawhite that @drewdober will be receiving his win bonus tonight. White also believes result should be changed to NC.

— John Morgan (@MMAjunkieJohn) March 22, 2015