Keith Kizer Fires Back at Joe Rogan, Requests for “Honesty” Regarding UFC
During Saturday’s broadcast of “The Ultimate Fighter 12 Finale” – but after one of the biggest robberies in Octagon history went down – Joe Rogan blasted the Nevada State Athletic Commission for allowing “incompetent morons” to dictate the futures and finances of fighters that just risked life and limb for 15 (sometimes 25) minutes.
The UFC’s color commentator specifically fingered executive director Keith Kizer, who Rogan claimed denies there’s an issue. On Monday, it was Kizer’s turn rock the mic.
He opted to take the high road when it came to Rogan (no pun intended), however pointed the finger in another direction in regards to MMA judging.
“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,” Kizer told MMAFA.tv,
“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 2- 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 with them overseas, as they should. That’s not a knock on [UFC president Dana White] and [Ratner], they know what they’re doing.”
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! reported both Adalaide Byrd and Weeks gave Leonard Garcia the opening and closing rounds in his controversial split decision victory over Nam Phan. Junichiro Kamijo was the only judge to award Phan with the obvious victory, awarding him a 30-27 sweep.
It’s odd Octagon brass would request Weeks’ services considering he apparently fell asleep during the opening fight of the Spike TV broadcast.
“Yeah, I have a problem with how they scored the 3rdRound. Definitely. I mean, they’re both very good judges which makes it all the more surprising,” Kizer stated.
Rogan also suggested the NSAC should fire every “incompetent moron” on their roster because they were killing the sport of mixed martial arts. Kizer wouldn’t go that far just yet, but did liken the situation to one that I did a couple of days ago.
“There have been judges that we’ve had here who we’ve sent packing. It didn’t work out. Every judge needs to stay sharp, but everyone makes mistakes,” Kizer added.
“It’s like that one umpire who ruined that perfect game in baseball. You can’t be more wrong than that. But you ask the players and they think that, other than that, he’s one of the best umpires in the sport. He’s a top-5 umpire. You can’t screw up much worse than that, but you don’t get rid of him either.”
UFC 124 takes place Saturday and features a welterweight title scrap between champ Georges St-Pierre and Josh Koscheck. Each of their last wins were decided by the three officials sitting Octagon-side.
Credited to Tom Ngo of 5thround.com
