Referee Herb Dean Let Alex Pereira Take ‘Control of the Octagon’

Hill (12-2) challenged Pereira for the light heavyweight title in
the main event at UFC
300 earlier this month. Pereira absorbed a glancing low blow
from Hill in the first round, brushed it off, stopped Dean from
intervening, and proceeded to knock “Sweet Dreams” out immediately
after.

Many, including former double champ Daniel
Cormier, have questioned Dean’s handling of the situation,
criticizing him for letting Pereira continue right after he had
called time. Hill also believes Dean could have done things
differently.

According to Hill, the intriguing moment had a role to play in his
knockout loss against “Poatan.” Hill claims he slacked a little on
hearing Dean call time, giving up angles, while Pereira kept
advancing. While Hill doesn’t want to make excuses and credits
Pereira for capitalizing on the moment, he would have preferred for
Dean to properly reset them. Going forward, the Chicago native is
also apprehensive of completely obeying the referee, after what he
felt was Dean letting Pereira control the Octagon.

“It’s ‘protect yourself at all times,’ but like right after that
[referees] tell you, it’s ‘obey my commands at all times,’ too,”
Hill told The Schmo. “In the moment whenever it happened,
I stopped, [Dean] said stop, before he interjected, I stopped. And
you can see Alex continues to close the distance on me. So, I
understand it’s a cold moment, he got hit in the nuts, he pushed it
off and then he came [to score a knockout]. It wasn’t a groin
strike and him closing the angle on me while I’m trying to check
and make sure he’s good and things like that, it was a gritty,
competitive move. Something I should have peeped, caught on to
[and] protected myself against. If Herb Dean could have done
anything I would have liked to have a more clean and better
reset.

“The fact that that ref will give your opponent control of the
Octagon like that, it makes me kind of think before I just straight
up disengage and just obey a ref’s command like that. If am being
honest. Like I said, I ain’t trying to make no excuse or anything
but if there’s one thing that I look back on the fight, I would
have done differently, it would have been kind of more so
disregarded that command and stayed on my angle. The only steps
that I took were in that moment where I was expecting a little bit
of a break. [Dean] stepped behind me, so he wasn’t exactly in my
line of sight when he gave the go-ahead signal, I did hear the
“fight,” but it was little late, like if you hear in the video,
people got a little loud and things like that.”

Veteran referee and mixed martial arts commentator John McCarthy,
who also helped create the Unified Rules of MMA, defended Dean
amidst the criticism. McCarthy noted that the fighter who has
absorbed a low blow has complete authority to decide when they
choose to resume the action.

Nevertheless, hardly a week after his knockout loss against
Pereira, Hill’s next fight was confirmed against Khalil
Rountree (13-5) in the
UFC 303 co-main event on June 29. Hill wants to finish Rountree
dominantly to make his case for a rematch against Pereira, which is
admittedly more important for “Sweet Dreams” at the moment than a
title shot.

“Honestly for me now it’s not even about the gold strap, it’s about
getting back to that fight,” said Hill. “I want to fight with Alex
again, just because of the narrative surrounding it and everything.
And I know what I was feeling in there and I know what type of time
I was really on when we stepped in there, so I just wanna get to
that fight, that’s the fight that I want.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3xbmItNL1s