Trading Shots: Downes and Fowlkes on Yoel Romero's unauthorized recovery period

In this week’s Trading Shots, former UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes and MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes join forces to discuss the controversial ending to the bout between Yoel Romero and Tim Kennedy at UFC 178.

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Downes: Well Ben, UFC 178 is in the books and there’s no shortage of stories to discuss. Cat Zingano and Dominick Cruz made their returns to the octagon, Demetrious Johnson continued his lockdown of the flyweight division, and the Conor McGregor hype train kept on rolling. What stuck with me the most, though, was the finish of the Tim Kennedy-Yoel Romero fight.

Kennedy had Romero rocked in the closing moments of the second round, but the bell prevented him from getting the finish. In between the second and third rounds, Romero’s cornermen bought their dazed fighter some extra time when they refused to leave the cage in a timely fashion, and dumped some extra water on the mat. Romero even sat on the stool well past his allotted minute. After a bit of confusion, Romero finally stood up and ended up knocking out Kennedy in the third.

Besides hoping we find a better name for this controversy than “Stoolgate,” what did you think of the whole situation? Was it an honest mistake, wily gamesmanship or outright cheating?

Fowlkes: The one thing it definitely wasn’t was an honest mistake. You just don’t see honest mistakes like that. Not at this level. Not in the UFC. So that leaves us with options No. 2 and No. 3: wily gamesmanship or outright cheating? I’d argue it was both those things, and I’d also argue that there’s really not much difference between the two, especially in this sport.

Think about it. A quick knee to the pills to buy yourself some time when you need a breather? Throwing your fingers in the vicinity of your opponent’s eyes, if only to give him something to think about as you circle away? How about grabbing the fence to avoid a takedown, knowing that you’re probably looking at nothing more serious than a verbal warning from the ref? Dude, that’s all cheating. It’s also all pretty smart tactics in this crazy sport, where we seem to have decided – either by action or inaction – that you should get to cheat a little bit.

I guess my question is, what should be done about it? Take this situation with Yoel “I Need A Minute To Myself” Romero, for instance. We could all see that he was flouting the rules as he lounged on his stool well after he’d been told to get up and get back to work. He clearly benefited from it, too. So what should referee John McCarthy have done about it? Disqualify him? Deduct a completely inconsequential point? What would referee Daniel W. Downes have done in that situation?

Downes: Sounds like calling a point deduction “completely inconsequential” is another classic Fowlkes ex post facto error. It didn’t matter that Jose Aldo grabbed the cage against Chad Mendes; he knocked the guy out anyway. If only we could get some of those precogs from “Minority Report” to tell us when we should actually enforce the rules.

You want to know what I would have done? I would have disqualified him. If a fighter does not answer the bell when his minute is up, he’s done. If you ask him multiple times to stand up and he refuses, it’s time to call the fight. It’s no different than when a fighter gets caught in a ground-and-pound position. If you say “do something” when he’s catching hammerfists to the back of the head (another foul we rarely see called), and he doesn’t do anything, the fight is over.

I may not be a licensed referee, but I certainly know that any action would have been better than no action. Apparently we need to treat MMA rules like the American tax code. We all know that your trips to gas station for bad coffee and beef jerky aren’t really “work expenses,” but you tell Uncle Sam they are anyway. Who cares, you’re just using smart accounting! It’s no big deal that you willingly and consciously broke the rules, you’re crafty!

Maybe I’m being a bit naive, but shouldn’t cheating (whether it’s minor or major) be punished? Romero can plead ignorance and throw out all the platitudes to American fans he wants, but he knows what happened. And even if he was in the fog of war too much to realize what was going on, his cornermen sure as hell knew what they were doing. So if wily gamesmanship and cheating are the same thing, where do we draw the line? If kicking a guy in the groin or spitting out your mouthguard to buy some time is a veteran move, what about other infractions? What about performance-enhancing drugs? It’s only cheating if you get caught, right?

Fowlkes: Before we get to your “DQ ‘em all, let the MMA gods sort ‘em out” approach, a note on point deductions: Because they are done so infrequently, and because you almost never see more than one per fight, they’re pretty useless in three-round fights. Just look at the math.

A point deduction can turn a narrow decision victory (29-28, let’s say) into either a draw (28-28) or a not-so narrow victory (29-27). It can turn a dominant win (30-27) into a slightly less (29-27) or slightly more (30-26) dominant win. Or it can turn a draw (29-29) into a narrow win for the non-offending party. That’s all. Those are the only options, and they only affect the outcome of the fight in two scenarios. The other scenario, of course, is that the fight gets finished inside the distance and then the point deductions literally do not matter. So if you have the opportunity to cheat in such a way that will increase your chances of finishing the fight or even just decrease your chances of being finished, you’d be a fool not to take it, especially since points are rarely deducted and, as we’ve established, the deductions likely won’t matter in the end.

Now, that’s not me saying we should throw out the rule book and give up. I’m just saying that the nature of this sport makes rules infractions difficult to punish. When they see a foul, refs have essentially four options: 1) Do nothing, 2) Offer a verbal warning, 3) Deduct a point, or 4) Disqualify the offending fighter. So basically the ref has to choose between doing absolutely nothing, doing something that probably won’t matter, and ending the contest entirely. And the thing is, nobody wants to see the contest end that way. It’s guaranteed controversy for the ref, more so even than doing nothing, and that makes refs very reluctant to pull the trigger.

Ours is one of the only sports where you don’t have any opportunity to pause the action without also altering the action with that intervention. MMA refs are constantly being asked to make the combat sports equivalent of a call at home plate in the bottom of the ninth. Anything they do has the potential to decide the whole thing, so they generally prefer to do very little and hope the fighters will figure it out for themselves.

Take what happened a few moments before the stool controversy, when Kennedy clearly slipped his fingers inside Romero’s glove to keep him from defending the punches. That’s illegal. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as intentional (Kennedy started with wrist control then let his fingers slip inside as Romero tried to free himself) or as egregious, but it’s still a rules violation that happened. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that McCarthy saw it. What do you want him to do there? Does he have any good options that don’t alter the course of the fight or end it prematurely?

Downes: So let me get this straight. Unintentional and less egregious fouls happen, and are difficult to properly punish. Therefore, completely intentional and flagrant fouls should be met with a shrug. I readily admit that being an MMA referee is not easy. It’s a no-win situation. Every TKO stoppage is either too late or too early. We’ll criticize Steve Mazzagatti for enforcing the rules (e.g. Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir I) and now we’re criticizing McCarthy for not being strict enough. I understand that it’s a thankless job, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge lapses in judgment.

That’s exactly what happened here. I know you believe the “invisible hand” of the MMA gods will solve all our problems, but I’m not quite so sure. In your little run down of point deductions, you tried to show that they’re ineffective. I think you did the opposite. You pointed out two situations where the offending party would not get the victory. I know that you never actually fought, so this may come as a surprise to you, but not winning your fight is a pretty big deal.

You seem wary of referee involvement because it will alter the course of events. That’s true, but doesn’t there have to be a corrective act to counter cheating? All athletic ability and modes of training aside, an MMA fight should be a fair, balanced affair (same weight, same techniques at your disposal, etc). Cheating alters the balance of that scale. The referee’s job is make sure things return to balance. Not to just shrug his/her shoulders and say, “Well, what’s a point deduction really going to do?” Say a multimillionaire gets a parking ticket for $50. Is it really going to change his conduct or affect him? Probably not. Does that person still deserve a parking ticket? Absolutely. You don’t enforce the rules of the sport haphazardly or when they’re convenient or based on their long-term repercussions. They should be enforced all the time.

Are there situations where they may be too close to call? Sure, but we’re not talking about a situation like that. I’m sure you can come up with a whole bunch of permutations of possible rules violations and other straw man arguments, but that doesn’t alter what happened last night. Since nothing happened last night, where does that take us now? Should Romero and his team be punished after the fact, or should we just shoot them a wink and say, “You got us, you sly dog!”

Fowlkes: That is the question. And let me make clear that I think it was some major monkey poop that Romero was allowed to sit there on his stool, just hanging out, until McCarthy practically hauled him up and shoved him back into the fray. That’s troubling not just because it gave Romero more than the allotted time to recover, but also because it seems potentially dangerous. If the guy can’t or won’t stand under his own power, seems like we’re taking a big risk by forcing him back into the fight. Also, as Kennedy pointed out on Twitter, it kind of seems like it’s expressly against the rules:

So would McCarthy have been justified in waving off the bout right then and there? Yeah, probably. Fans probably also would have hated him for it, but ideally a ref wouldn’t take anything of that nature into account when making these decisions. You ask, “doesn’t there have to be a corrective act to counter cheating?” Yes, and too often in MMA there simply isn’t any real attempt at it, and that sucks. It rewards cheaters. It encourages cheaters. It’s a damn problem, is what it is, and maybe we do need some DQs in order to make it stop. I just wonder if we’d like that solution in practice as much as we might think we would in theory.

The fact remains, however, that what’s done is done and we can’t go back in time to change it, so now what? Ideally, the Nevada State Athletic Commission would rule it a no-contest and the UFC would book a rematch. That seems fair. Does that mean that’s what will happen? Well, it did happen in Las Vegas, so how about I give you 2-1 odds against there being anything at all done to right this wrong. What do you say, any takers?

For complete coverage of UFC 178, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.