Henry Cejudo is tired of seeing referee Herb Dean make mistakes.
King Green immediately protested his first-round TKO loss to Esteban Ribovics on this past Saturday’s UFC 332 main card in Salt Lake City, where Dean waved off the fight after Green got knocked down for a third time.
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Dean also missed an illegal knee that Ian Escuza landed on Luca Borando in his fight-ending sequence at Dana White’s Contender Series 94 last Tuesday. UFC CEO Dana White acknowledged that it’s been a “rough f*cking year” for Dean, who was chastised the most for his handling of Alex Pereira’s TKO loss to Ciryl Gane at UFC Freedom 250, where he missed numerous shots to the back of the head.
Cejudo went off on Dean and believes it’s time the commission intervenes.
“Speaking of robbery, your boy Herb Dean, that dude has just been – f*ck, man, it’s ridiculous,” Cejudo said on his “Pound for Pound” podcast with Kamaru Usman. “It’s ridiculous that the Nevada State Athletic Commission, that he still even has a job, in my opinion. Nobody likes this dude no more, they show him on camera, and he’s getting booed. No accountability whatsoever. It’s a f*cking mafia.”
Kamaru Usman came to Dean’s defense on Green’s UFC 332 loss.
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“If you put yourself in a vulnerable position, to where you give him a reason to potentially stop it, it’s very difficult to be upset later,” Usman said. “Like, ‘Damn, why did you stop that?’ You put yourself in that vulnerable position. So, his job in there is to potentially try to protect you from taking brain damage.”
Cejudo admits the Green stoppage wasn’t that bad but takes issue with all of Dean’s past mishandlings.
“I get what you’re saying. That is a tough job,” Cejudo responded. “I’m not so mad at this one. Maybe I am just picking on Herb Dean, but the last time at the Contender Series when that dude (Borando) gets kneed to the f*cking head, and this dude (Dean) doesn’t have the balls. You should have stopped it when he got kneed. The ‘Poatan’ (Pereira), it’s just endless, dude. I think he just needs to take a break from fighting. He needs to step aside.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Ex-UFC champ: It’s ‘ridiculous’ referee Herb Dean ‘still even has a job’
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