Former UFC referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy offered his expertise on UFC Seattle’s controversial ending.
Stepping into the main event spotlight in desperate need of a win, Henry Cejudo instead suffered his third straight defeat when he surrendered a decision to Song Yadong. Sounds simple enough, but it was anything but.
Closing in on the final minute of the third round, Song inadvertently poked Cejudo in the left eye, bringing a pause to the action. ‘Triple C’ took the full five minutes of recovery time and opted to finish the remainder of the round.
However, once Cejudo got back to his corner, he let it be known that he could not see out of his eye which prompted the fight to be called off just before the fourth round was set to begin.
It’s unclear if Cejudo expected the fight to be ruled a no-contest, but the contest was ultimately sent to the scorecards where Song won a unanimous technical decision.
With all the confusion surrounding the finish, McCarthy tried to offer some insight into what went down and why Cejudo was slapped with another loss on his record despite being fouled.
“As simple as I can put this,” McCarthy wrote on X. “Henry was fouled by Yadong with the eye poke. The foul was ruled to be unintentional by Jason Herzog and Jason gave Henry 5:00 minutes of time to recover. Henry resumes in the fight for the remainder of the 3rd round by avoiding confrontation with Yadong. During the break between the 3rd and 4th round Henry spoke to his cornermen and stated that he could not see out of his left eye. The injury was not caused by a fair blow (Legal Technique).
“If the injury was caused by a Legal Technique Henry would have lost by TKO. The injury was caused by a FOUL. You cannot lose the fight based upon the stopping of the fight due to an injury caused by a foul. A sufficient number of rounds were completed for the judges scorecards to determine a winner of the contest based upon the fight passing the 3rd round of a 5 round fight. A Technical Decision is used to establish a winner in a fight where the allotted number of rounds (With this fight being 5) are not completed due to an injury sustained by a fighter that was caused by a foul be it intentional or accidental.”
John McCarthy explains why UFC referee Jason Herzog started the fourth round
Adding to the confusion in Seattle was Referee Jason Herzog who informed both fighters that he would have to start the fourth round and then immediately pause the action to go to the scorecards. According to the ABC’s website, a fight only has to reach the halfway point for a fight to go to the judges due to an accidental foul. As it turns out, that’s not the case at all.
McCarthy explained that in a five-round fight, the contest must enter the fourth round to go to a technical decision, hence why Herzog quickly stopped and started the penultimate round.
“Problem is this, McCarthy added in a follow-up post. “You can look at what is on the ABC’s website under the rules, and it is completely wrong. It will say that the fight must go to the halfway point for the fight to be judged as a Technical Decision. That is only for fights that are either 2 round or 4 round fights. In a 3 round fight the fight must enter the 3rd round and in a 5 round fight it must enter the 4th round to go to a Tech Decision.
“There are places like California that go on the finished the 2nd of a 3 round fight or finished the 3rd of a 5 round fight. But the actual Unified rule states must enter the 3rd or 4th . That is why Jason made a start and halt of the 4th. It should have been judged as a 10-10 round by all the judges and the scorekeeper should have come out with scores of 40-36 and 39-37 on two of the cards. It was not Jason’s fault the Commission didn’t complete the job correctly.”
