- John McCarthy assessed referee Kerry Hatley’s delayed stoppage in the Jalin Turner vs. Bobby Green fight at UFC Austin
- “Big John” detailed a possible cause of the incident
Former UFC referee John McCarthy tried to break down what could’ve have possibly caused the delayed stoppage that saw Bobby Green suffering severe damage in his KO loss to Jalin Turner at UFC Austin.
A “Tunnel Vision” mistake
Discussing the issue on his Weighing In podcast, “Big John” agreed that referee Kerry Hatley indeed made a terrible decision of prolonging the fight when Green was already knocked out cold. However, McCarthy shared an interesting insight and explained that what Hatley might have done was focus on one little thing which caused him to miss out on what was really going on in the fight.
According to “Big John,” it’s called “Tunnel Vision.”
“When he got hit and went down you could almost have said at that moment that fight could have been stopped and I want to say it was like at 02:23 on the clock when he got hit and I understand why the referee Kerry Hatley did not stop it at that point and I’m gonna say right now, Kerry Hatley is my friend, I love him, he’s a great referee, he’s a great person, it wasn’t his night in making this call,” McCarthy explained. “That just happens, and it’s unfortunate but the first person that would tell you it wasn’t a great job would be Kerry Hatley himself. He’d be honest about it and say, ‘I made a mistake. I didn’t see it.'”
Sometimes when you’re the referee, I call it… you get micro, you get focused in, we call it ‘Tunnel Vision’ and you start looking at the micro instead of the macro and the macro is you want to look at everything and you start to focus and tunnel in on one thing that you don’t see everything and everyone around you sees it because they’re seeing everything and you’re the one that’s not. That’s what happened,” he continued.
THE TARANTULA KNOCKS OUT BOBBY GREEN 🕷️@JalinTurner got the job done on short notice at #UFCAustin pic.twitter.com/EObEzayRTU
— UFC (@ufc) December 3, 2023
“He started to tunnel in on what Bobby was doing with his hands in trying to cover up and seeing that is he trying to get himself out I want to give him as much chance as I can and he wasn’t seeing the severity of the shots that Bobby was taking because Jalin was unloading on him. If I’m being honest at that certain point I jumped up from my chair and said ‘Stop the goddamn fight!’ because it was that bad and it got to the point where Bobby went out and he still took a couple of shots,” he added.
The worst in MMA
As expected, MMA personalities and fans alike weren’t happy with Hatley’s delayed call. In fact, many are now calling it “the worst stoppage” in MMA thus far.
At this point, Green appears to be fine. On the other hand, it is yet to be known if Hatley would be reprimanded for the incident.
Check out McCarthy’s full podcast below:
