Jorge Masvidal has spent a long career standing in front of people who wanted to hurt him, so when he says he can spot nerves in another man inside the cage, I take it seriously. On the Deep Waters podcast (his comments were picked up by Home of Fight and later MMA Mania), Masvidal went after Herb Dean without the usual cushioning. He didn’t call for a review or a conversation. He called for an ending.
“He’s got nervous energy, why you doing that bro?” Masvidal said. “He could calmly [separate the fighters]. You’re supposed to protect the fighters. He’s the most nervous guy in there, I don’t think he should be an official. I think his time is done.”
That lands at a bad moment for Dean. He has been the third man in the Octagon for over 20 years and is among the most familiar faces at the UFC level, which means he has worked a huge share of the fights people remember. This year, though, he has been under the microscope since the finish of Ciryl Gane vs. Alex Pereira, where he called no illegal blows in the closing sequence. Pereira has publicly campaigned to have Dean removed. Since then every borderline moment gets picked apart, and fans have started booing when the broadcast cuts to him.
Masvidal Found the Right Target
Pereira’s complaint is about one sequence in one fight. That’s a fair grievance, and he earned the right to be angry, but a single bad call is the kind of thing every referee with two decades of reps will have on his record somewhere. What Masvidal described is a habit, and habits are what should actually worry a commission.
He’s almost certainly talking about what fans have nicknamed the “Herb Dean shuffle,” that in and out movement Dean makes while he decides whether to step in. MMA Mania pointed to the recent knockout in Esteban Ribovics vs. King Green as an example. Once you’ve seen the shuffle, you can’t stop seeing it. A referee’s body is a signal to everyone in the cage. When he hovers, the fighter on the bottom doesn’t know if help is coming and the fighter on top doesn’t know whether to keep throwing. Masvidal’s phrase for the result, more or less, is a man who can’t act definitively, and that is the one quality a referee can’t afford to lack.
This is why I think Masvidal’s critique is more useful than Pereira’s, even though Pereira’s is louder. You can argue about whether a strike in a frantic finish was illegal. Hesitation shows up on tape over and over, across different fighters and different nights. A commission can study that.
Where I Get Off the Train
The part I can’t sign onto is the verdict. “His time is done” is a podcast sentence, and it fits neatly with an arena full of people booing a referee’s face on the big screen. Neither of those is a process. A guy who has worked at the top level for over 20 years shouldn’t be pushed out by crowd noise and a couple of famous fighters with grudges, and if he’s going to be pushed out, it should happen because somebody in charge looked at the film and said so in public.
That’s exactly what isn’t happening. MMA Mania found no evidence that any athletic commission is considering benching Dean. The fallback, as things stand, is that individual fighters can request a different official. Think about what that asks of them. A fighter preparing for the biggest night of his career is supposed to also scout the referee, decide whether the man’s tendencies are a threat to his health, and then go make an awkward formal request about a respected veteran. That puts the burden on the person with the least power in the room and the most to lose.
So here’s my position. Masvidal is right about the problem and wrong about the remedy, and the commissions are the ones failing here. If the shuffle is real (and the Ribovics vs. Green tape suggests it is), the people who assign referees should review it openly and decide whether Dean keeps working high-profile fights until it’s addressed. If they look and conclude he’s fine, they should say that too, with reasons. Silence just lets the booing get louder, and that isn’t fair to Dean any more than it’s fair to the fighters.
Masvidal, meanwhile, is 41 and talking about coming back soon. MMA Mania floated old enemy Leon Edwards and fellow veteran star Conor McGregor as possible opponents. If one of those fights gets booked, Masvidal will have the right to ask for somebody other than Herb Dean. I’d bet good money he uses it.
