Dana White slams ‘Mazzagatti-level’ officiating, says Mike Rodriguez gets win money

A questionable moment happened in the second round of one of the main card fights during Saturday’s UFC APEX card. Light heavyweight Mike Rodriguez landed a shot on veteran Ed Herman that momentarily halted the action.

Referee Chris Tognoni saw it as a low blow and issued a warning. The replay, however, showed it to be a clean knee strike to the body.

Herman managed to pick up the third-round submission win, but not in Dana White’s eyes. The outspoken UFC president shared his sentiments and some strong words towards Tognoni at the post-fight scrum.

“It’s hard not to bang on this guy. The worst I’ve ever seen,” White told the media. “That’s some Mazzagatti-level sh-t right there. That was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.

“That kid (Rodriguez) wins by knockout. Technical knockout, and loses the fight. Just one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Disgusting.”

White is now stressing the need for instant replay, not just for fight-ending sequences.

“I was all over them tonight about replay. We have to have replay. There’s gotta be replay. All you gotta do is look at the f—ng replay that’s playing 6,000 times while Herman’s on the ground and say, ‘Oh sh-t, I made a mistake.’ You can’t see everything, they’re human,” he said.

“How you think that is a groin kick is next level nuts, but whatever. It happens, what are you gonna do?”

Rodriguez may have lost the fight, but he’s not going home empty-handed according to White.

“We’ve giving Mike his win money, too. He won the f—ng fight.”

Herman did share what happened from his point of view during his post-fight conversation with Michael Bisping.

“I don’t know where I got hit, but I know I was hurt and I went down. I don’t know if it was the groin or the body, but all I know is I went down,” Herman explained. “I’m not really sure, I have to watch the tape to see how bad it was.

“I was freaking tired, man, there’s no energy in here, it’s really weird.”

Herman is now on his third straight win as he improves to a record of 26-14 (with 1 NC and 21 wins by stoppage).