Keith Kizer, 'The UFC's Joe Rogan Needs To Know His Role and Shut His Mouth'

Head of the Nevada State Athletic Commission Keith Kizer spoke to MMAFA in response to Joe Rogan's on air rant about a bad decision that recently happened at the Ultimate Fighter Season 12 Finale between Nam Phan and Leonard Garcia. 

"If Joe Rogan wants to get on the air and call people names, that's his business. I'm not going waste my time responding to that. They always say that ‘the UFC has nothing to do with judging.' Well guess what, they've got a big fight coming up in Canada called Koscheck vs. Georges St. Pierre - the UFC and Marc Ratner are flying Tony Weeks up there as a judge. C'mon, Joe. How about some honesty? They've taken 90% of our officials overseas with them, as they should. That's not a knock on Dana [White] and Marc [Ratner]; they know what they're doing."

If you don't remember, Tony Weeks was a judge who gave the fight to Garcia. An interesting revelation by Mr. Kizer. On most foreign shows, the UFC has free reign to bring in licensed judges and referees (at the UFC's cost). Wouldn't you think the UFC would choose the best officials? I mean, according to Joe Rogan, Tony Weeks is incompetent, why would the UFC be bringing him in? Was this an abnormality on Weeks' record? 

Kizer goes on to talk about how they do release judges that don't work out and that some fans love to cry about decisions for the sake of complaining.

"You hear so many people cry ‘robbery' about this and that. I get emails about it all of the time. I go back and watch the fight, and you say to yourself, ‘What? That wasn't a robbery. The judges got it right!'"

"A lot of people were saying that about the Rampage vs. Machida fight. Even Dana White said that. You get people who love to overreact. Obviously there are people who want to feel superior than others, trash others. Maybe they are full of some self-hate, some self-pity... maybe that's Rogan's piece as well."
Kizer also thinks the tone of the outrage is unacceptable.

"There are ways to criticize professionally, ethically, effectively and legitimately. But then there are ways where you are just trying to make yourself look better."

"But more often than not, when people complain about the judges, they're just wrong. They are either wrong in the sense that the judges did in fact get it right, or they are wrong in the sense that it wasn't a robbery and it could have gone either way."

Although Kizer himself scored all rounds for Nam Phan and finds the criticism difficult to defend this time, he sees an argument that could be put forth for a Garcia victory:

"I've been getting all of these e-mails saying ‘What's wrong with you? Phan dominated every round!' and they're wrong. You can't give Phan that round but you can't say he dominated. I think MMAWeekly scored that round to Garcia. I think MMAJunkie scored the third round for Garcia. You can't tell me he ‘dominated' those rounds."

He makes a great point at the end. If some people saw the first round for Garcia and some saw the third round for Garcia, and these are reputable sites, then why can't it be reasoned that the judges saw it that way too. 

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