UFC Fight Night 42 certainly gave us plenty to talk about. The bad part is that almost none of it is from the actual fights.
Instead, the hot topics are the judges involved in the Diego Sanchez-Ross Pearson fight (along with the testing procedure before the fight), Jason High shoving an official and Bryan Caraway using an illegal move en route to his win over Erik Perez. With so many questions, New Mexico Athletic Commission chairman Tom King spoke to SWFight.com about the situations and how the commission plans to handle them.
The Pearson-Sanchez Decision:
Ross was very professional about the way he presented the appeal to us. We will do our due diligence to review the matter and go from there. We will take our time investigating this. [The investigation] may very well last until next month. There are a lot of hurdles. We're probably going to look into getting a legal opinion.
A member of the commission told SWFight.com that there wasn't a scorecard tabulation, which leaves only collusion and/or a violation of the rules and regulations as ways the fight could be overturned.
Pearson and Sanchez went to a split decision, with Sanchez picking up the victory. Inexplicably, one of the judges scored all three rounds for Sanchez despite the fact that the Jackson's MMA fighter was knocked down and taken down in one of the three rounds.
Pearson Claiming None of the Jackson's MMA Fighters Were Tested:
King was adamant that this was not the case.
"We always, always test the two fighters involved in a main event,” he emphatically stated. "That includes the fighter from Jackson's [Rustam Khabilov] on Saturday. For someone to say that a fighter from that camp was not tested, is factually incorrect."
Pearson's camp brought up concerns about who was being tested prior to the fight, but King quickly shot down that conspiracy theory.
High Shoving Kevin Mulhall:
"That's never happened in New Mexico before," said King, of High's outburst. "That just really doesn't happen sport wide. Everyone knows you don't touch officials. You just don't."
High thought his fight with Rafael dos Anjos was stopped too soon and acted out with emotions running high (no pun intended). As he stood up, High shoved the referee away and certainly gained himself some punishment from the NMAC.
Considering that a suspension and/or fines may be in order for High, this subject will very likely be brought up when the commission meets on Tuesday.
Caraway Fish-Hooking Incident:
Both Caraway and Perez's coach, Greg Jackson, dismissed the foul as an accident. King confirmed with SWFight.com that neither Perez nor Jackson have filed a complaint, and it's likely that this is a dead issue now.
With everyone involved moving on from the incident, it looks like this is just going to be nothing more than something for the anti-Caraway crowd to bring up the next time he steps into the Octagon.
Albuquerque was under the microscope of the MMA world for the first time ever when UFC Fight Night 42 went down. With so many questionable actions taking place, fans aren't going to remember this trip to the Southwest United States with fond memories.
To his credit, King had this to say about the incidents from UFC Fight Night 42.
"We learned a lot from this show," he said. "We have rules and procedures in place and we're going to apply them to assist us in addressing the issues that have presented themselves."
