Originally Posted by
Shamelessly copied from a Reddit post
rundown of interesting points for those on mobile / at work:
I like how before criticising what happened, BJM takes the time to compliment Dan Miragliotta's tan.
Quote re Weidman:
>**BJM**: ...and Weidman goes and puts his hands on the ground in a manner that is not part of what we're going to say is a grounded fighter, because we want fighters to get away from what they're doing.
>In that situation, we want Chris Weidman — put your knee to the ground. Use your hands to defend yourself. That's what they're there for. We *don't* want you putting your hands to the ground. Because then you're open to get, you know, your head uppercutted into the first row.
BJM says that it wasn't the replay which allowed him to see the move was legal - he says that he just had a better angle on the action and so he could see that it was fingertip contact in realtime. BJM did watch a replay cageside on Dan's request but he already knew it was legal and had told Dan so.
Also, the rule for grounded fighter with hands has apparently seen another slight revision since the fight:
>**BJM**: You have to put both your hands down, palm or fist, *bearing weight*, to make yourself grounded. So what I'm telling you is, don't ever fucking do that. What I want to see is, I want to see you drop to a knee, put your hands in a position to defend yourself, come into a grappling technique — do something to get yourself out. Don't ever get to this point where we're putting our hands down. That's only if, let's say you *fall* to that point, that's the only time I want to see that. And we did that, in putting that rule in place, because we didn't want someone that was hurt falling forward (onto their hands) and be able to have a guy come up and soccer kick or punt him to the face.
It's a small difference, but AFAIK the "bearing weight" bit hasn't been mentioned before.
>**BJM**: And then Dan came over and I told him: "Dan..." he says "Did you see it?" and I said "Yes. It's **legal**. What he did was legal. You need to tell Chris, that if he stays with what he's doing he's going to lose this fight by a TKO." And, y'know, Chris's corner is telling him "Chris, you have time. Chris, stay down." They're milking something for their fighter.
Not that my opinion matters much on this, but I agree with BJM. There was an (easy to make) ref error which wouldn't have been the end of the fight except Weidman and his corner tried to exploit it for a DQ win.
> **BJM**: Physician talks to Chris. He says, y'know, "What month is it?" and Chris says "February." Now, does he do it on purpose or does he, y'know, does he do it because he really doesn't know? Can't say, but right away when they came back and said "hey that's good" (hey, the strikes were legal) he said "It's April eighth!"
> **Interviewer**: Oh, he did?
>**BJM**: (laughs) Oh yeah, he knew the day right away. (chuckles) So you look and you go alright, he's trying to play a game with it a little bit we'll say, but — he played himself into a loss.
TL;DR:
>**BJM**: If you're not hurt, don't play hurt.