Dan Miragliotta has been doing his job for sometime, but when is he going to start doing it right again or will he even have a chance? Miragliotta has made some bad calls in the past and was back at it this past Saturday.
He stopped the action in the Yuri Alcantara vs. Pedro Nobre fight because of a perceived blow to the back of Nobre’s head. Replays showed that this what not the case (another Alessio Sakara moment).
Nobre was unable to continue, though many were skeptical of how damaged he truly was including UFC commentator Kenny Florian. The fight was declared a no contest and Dana White went to twitter to express his disgust. “That was BS!!! Pedro is an award winning actor and horrible call by Dan M.”
The first fight of the night on the main card had Miragliotta back at it again. Khabib Nurmagomedov dropped Thiago Tavares early in the first round with a left hand and followed it up with 14 unanswered and powerful elbows winning the fight with impressive ground and pound.
Despite a complete lack of defense from Tavares, Miragliotta allowed him to take much more of a beating than necessary causing another outburst from Dana White via twitter. “Ok that is officially the END of Dan M!!!! Guys head is straight up his ass 2 night!!!! 17 vicious strikes!!!! After he was already hurt.”
Dana has a right to be mad. This isn’t the first time he has had problems with Miragliotta. This is the same ref that poked Heath Herring in the eye during the staredown with Brock Lesner, which ended up being the same eye that Lesner smashed at the beginning of the fight.
This is also the same ref that actually tried shouting directions at Matt Hamill (a def fighter) when he fought Roger Hollet At UFC 152. As if it couldn’t get any worse, we had the back of the head controversy with Alessio Sakara at UFC 154 against Patrick Cote.
If the reffing isn’t already bad enough, now we have to deal with this? This has to stop and I’m sure Dana will put an end to it and make an example out of Miragliotta in the press and to the fans the way he berates Steve Mazzagatti these days. I’m sure Miragliotta is a great guy, but even the nicest guy will lose his job if he doesn’t perform well.