Herb Dean Vs. Joe Rogan? Veteran Referee Breaks Down His Controversial UFC 306 Decisions

Tenured referee Herb Dean wants to have a sit-down conversation with Joe Rogan and the rest of the UFC 306 broadcast team.

In September, Dean saw a significant amount of criticism flung his way during UFC 306’s headliner between Merab Dvalishvili and ‘Sugar’ Sean O’Malley. During the later rounds, Dean repeatedly warned Dvalishvili to keep working and stay busy while deploying his grappling-heavy attack. Rogan called Dean’s tactics “insane” and was quite critical of his performance in the championship rounds.

Appearing on the JAXXON podcast with Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, Dean attempted to address the criticism from Rogan and Co. and revealed how he first became aware of their negative comments.

“I’m not sure if I totally understand that myself,” Dean said. “I think the analysts who started it — and I don’t want to be critiquing those guys, or have an adversarial relationship because, first of all, they say a lot of good things about me, and they have over the years.

“I would like to talk to them… the commentators. I can tell it was the commentators before I even heard that it was because on social media, I was getting a lot of the same thing. … I see a bunch of grown men saying somebody else’s opinion, must’ve been something the analysts said, and it was” (h/t MMA Fighting).

Dvalishvili ultimately came out on top, scoring a unanimous decision victory over O’Malley to claim the bantamweight world title. Before that, Dean was part of a few other odd moments during the 25-minute affair, including an instance where he had to discourage ‘The Machine’ from speaking to O’Malley’s coach Tim Welch in the opening seconds. Dean was also forced to tell Dvalishvili to stop “kissing” his opponent during a grappling exchange.

Herb Dean defends his actions at UFC 306 amid criticism from Joe Rogan

However, it was Rogan’s issue with Dean’s calls to “keep working” that generated a majority of the negative attention on online.

“They’re saying that I shouldn’t be telling the guys to work,” Dean explained. “This is something I’ve always done. Our sport, there’s rules that are there for safety. There’s rules that are there for fairness, we have rules that are there to build our sport. To make our sport what it’s supposed to be. To make our sport more exciting. …

“Most of the coaches can say my pre-fight instructions with me because I say the same thing. I tell them about things we have problems with. Most of them know the rules… but to this stuff, two things that are the most important things before I intervene: The biggest intervention is when I’m going to start your fight. So you always hear me say, ‘Fight back. Fight back.’ That lets them know so it’s not a surprise to them. …

“The next thing I’m going to say is, I’m going to say ‘work.’ And that means that I’m about to take your position away. Because in this sport we have position, and a position can lead to a fight being finished, but when I say ‘work,’ that means what I’m looking for is not just busy work, I’m looking for effort to finish the fight.

“Instead a bunch of [tapping] punches, where you could do a full five-minute round with this and not change, I’m expecting you to posture, throw bigger shots. Instead of trying to hold on, I’m expending you to spend energy advancing position, passing guard, or if you’re up against the fence, putting energy into a takedown. Something that’s going to bring the fight to a conclusion.”

Simply put, if a fighter is using their dominant position to ride out the clock, Dean is going to step in and issue a warning or force a standup to make the sport more exciting for fans.

“If you have a superior position, if you’re not using it to win the fight, you’re using it to hide from your opponent to burn time,” Dean said. “That’s not what we want our sport to look like, I don’t think.”