Referee Herb Dean addresses UFC 306 main event weirdness

Almost immediately, the UFC 306 main event between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili took a strange turn.  In the opening seconds of the bantamweight title bout at the Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 14, Dvalishvili began yelling at O’Malley’s coach Tim Welch.

Dean briefly halted the fight and told Welch to stop it before resuming the action.  It was a strange occurrence that even caught the commentators off guard.    

“I’m not here to be anyone’s parent or anything, and we want people’s personalities to be able to shine. That’s what makes our sport fun,” Dean told Helen Yee. “We have some great personalities, but there is a rule that the seconds (cornermen) are not to interfere in the fight, and that includes trying to influence the referee. It specifies that, and you definitely can’t influence the other fighter or distract them. Your job is to coach the fighter, and my job is to do something about it.”

Dean received some criticism for his actions but the referee explained that it was well within his authority to warn Welch for his coaching tactics.  

“It happens, and we do address it,” Dean said. “It’s been happening as long as the sports have been here, you know what I mean. Even coaching the referee through the fighter, ‘OK, Herb is going to stand you up because all he wants to do is hold you, and he’s a boring, b*tch ass wrestler,’ and you know they try to coach me through coaching their fighter, and we know it. If it gets to be too much, we’ll say, ‘Hey, that’s a little excessive.’ It’s in the rules, and that’s what the rule is for.”

Related: Merab Dvalishvili claims Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev are not Russian

In the final moments of the second round, Dvalishvili had O’Malley trapped against the cage and began killing “Suga” several times on his back.  Dvalishvili disengaged and walked away with seconds left on the clock.  O’Malley got to his feet and punched Dvalishvili before the bell.  Afterward, Dean warned Dvalishvili.  

“Yes, yes, and that falls under sportsmanlike conduct. It does.” Dean said about the kisses. “Abusive language and things like that you’re not supposed to do.”