Garreth McLellan scored the biggest win of his MMA career on Saturday, when he knocked out Bubba Bush in the opening bout of UFC Fight Night 76.
However, when referee Piotr Michalak stopped the bout with only two seconds left in the third and final round, the South African middleweight's elation (and exhaustion) may have been tempered with something else.
Observers on social media roundly criticized the stoppage as coming too late, with Michalak inadvertently allowing a physically spent and vulnerable Bush to absorb unnecessary brutality as McLellan repeatedly punched him in the head from the mount position.
WOW! @SoldierBoyInc is RUTHLESS! #UFCDublin https://t.co/5ll50Lodg8
— UFC (@ufc) October 24, 2015
Wow. That stoppage came with about 1 second left in the third round. Nice win for McLellan. Ref could have called it earlier.
— Mike Bohn (@MikeBohnMMA) October 24, 2015
Did the referee take too long to stop last night's opening fight at UFC Dublin? https://t.co/skcIQunjhi pic.twitter.com/8akc54PRwu
— The42.ie (@The42_ie) October 25, 2015
Late stoppage by the referee but kudos to @SoldierboyInc for finishing the 3rd round strong. https://t.co/CGwU5d0Kdz
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) October 24, 2015
Based on an interview after the fight, it looks like McLellan shares that sentiment. Though he was quick to acknowledge the difficulty of a referee's job, McLellan did note that he believed Michalak could have intervened more quickly, and that Bush may have been knocked unconscious on two separate occasions.
"I wasn't going until he stopped. I actually think I put him out twice, and I think the ref was a little bit slow on it—but obviously not to his fault because he couldn’t see. It was very quick," McLellan said in a video interview provided by Abbey Subhan of MMAjunkie.
With time waning, it appeared Michalak may have been giving Bush every opportunity to survive to the end of the bout. Ultimately, however, the net result was that the bout was stopped anyway, with Bush absorbing more than one unanswered blow to the skull.
The official result of the bout was a technical knockout for McLellan four minutes and 58 seconds into the third round. It was McLellan's first win in the UFC, and it ran the 33-year-old's professional MMA record to 13-3.
Meanwhile, Bush (8-3-1) is now winless in two UFC contests. His UFC debut in 2014 was originally a submission loss to Kevin Casey, but it was later ruled a no-contest after Casey failed a drug test.
