Dana White was asked about a small but very real wrinkle from UFC Sacramento, and this one was not about a scorecard meltdown or another post-fight bonus debate. It was about two old-school UFC names working on the other side of the cage after Gregory Rodrigues and Anthony Hernandez turned the main event into a five-round scrap.
Chris Leben served as a cageside judge for the UFC Sacramento headliner, while Frank Trigg worked the card as a referee. That is a fun bit of MMA timeline chaos on its own, because Leben and Trigg were once the guys making judges and refs sweat. Now they are wearing the grown-up shirts and handling the paperwork nobody on fight night ever stops yelling about.
White was asked after the event how important it is to bring former fighters into judging and officiating roles. He said the commissions still control those assignments, but the UFC boss was clearly not against the idea.
Watch the UFC Sacramento post-fight press conference below:
“Well, it’s definitely a good thing for guys to do after they retire, but that’s between them and the athletic commission. But yeah, we’d love to have more fighters, guys who actually know what they’re looking at and have experienced it and understand the game like they do.”
“Yeah, and I love Chris, so it’s good to see him.”
Former Fighters In The Hot Seat
White added that he loves Leben and was happy to see him working the event. The bigger point is obvious without dressing it up too much. MMA judging gets torched almost every weekend, sometimes fairly and sometimes because fans score fights with their gambling slips on fire. Having people who have actually been locked in a cage understand what is happening in real time is not the worst idea in the world.
Leben is not some random name drifting through the building. He was part of the original Ultimate Fighter boom, fought 22 times in the UFC, and built a career on walking through fire until the other guy blinked first. Trigg has his own long UFC history, and he has been around the officiating side for years. Neither name magically fixes every judging argument, but UFC Sacramento gave fans a clear look at what that retired-fighter pipeline can look like.
White was also asked whether Trigg should have stopped Reinier de Ridder’s finish over Roman Dolidze sooner. White said the stoppage never reached the point where he felt compelled to object.
“I don’t know. I didn’t say, ‘Holy shit.’ Believe me, there’s been some fights where I’m like, ‘They need to stop this fight right now.’ That definitely wasn’t one of them. I didn’t feel that way, no.”
The timing also helped the conversation. UFC Sacramento had plenty happening around the margins, from Reinier de Ridder smashing Roman Dolidze to White addressing other fight-week issues after the card. This was a night where veterans were not just being wheeled out for nostalgia. Some of them were helping run the show.
Whether commissions actually lean harder into that model is another matter. They move at commission speed, which is usually somewhere between a bad heavyweight gas tank and a replay review that never ends. Still, White’s answer gives the idea a green light from the UFC side, and after a weekend that also produced medical fallout from Cub Swanson’s win over Lerryan Douglas, the sport can always use more trained eyes in the right seats.
