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#1 Worst: What was Dan Miragliotta doing?
Referee Dan Miragliotta – AKA ‘Tan Dan’ – began his tenure with the UFC sometime around 2008 with somewhat of a worrying reputation for making gaffes. Gifs of some of them – the time he accidentally poked Heath Herring in the eye, or the time when he shoved a leaping Akihiro Gono across the Octagon – even went viral.
More disturbing though was his late stoppage during a 2010 fight between Shane Carwin and Frank Mir, in which a clearly unconscious Mir took a ton of unneeded punishment. Miragliotta hasn’t really been in the spotlight recently but last night it shone back down on him in a bad way.
Does anyone know what he was thinking with the Jacare/Weidman stoppage? Souza hit Weidman with a right hand to the temple and it was clear that the former champion was done. Weidman went crashing down, eyes completely glazed, and clearly couldn’t defend himself. And impressively, Jacare refused to pounce on him, assuming – like everyone else - that the fight was over.
Not for Miragliotta, apparently. The big referee simply stood over the fighters looking on, even allowing Weidman a weak takedown attempt before Souza was forced to drop a series of pointless hammer fists to finally trigger the stoppage.
The gaffe was particularly bad when you consider the kind of punishment Weidman had already endured during the fight – and the punishment he’s taken during a long career, in fact. I’m not saying Miragliotta is a terrible referee – the fact that he hasn’t been spoken about recently says he’s usually fine – but this was a horrible, horrible error in judgment.
