There were inexplicable 30-27 scores in the Kenny Florian vs Diego Nunes and Mark Munoz vs Demian Maia fights as well, despite Nunes and Maia both clearly winning the first rounds of their respective bouts. And it wasn't via some kind of amazing but hard to fathom jiu jitsu either, both Nunes and Maia visibly hurt their opponents with punches and took little return fire in the opening frame of their respective bouts.
Dana White went off on the judging in an interview with MMA Fighting (transcribed by Fight Opinion):
"It's getting to the point now where I don't even know what to say any more. You, you... It's one thing if, you know, if you look at me and everybody's going, ‘Oh, yeah, his business...' Fans get pissed off and I get pissed off because these guys are hurting the fighters. It screws your record, it screws up your money, it screws up your legacy, everything, guys getting losses that shouldn't have losses, you know, Bones Jones shouldn't have a loss on his record right now, and the list goes on and on and that was a referee, not a, and I can go on for days what's wrong with the officiating in this thing. The guys tonight and what's even scarier is that we have fucking TVs in front of these guys. Maybe you couldn't see it before, maybe the lights or you had a bad angle, you have a television in front of you now. Anybody who, the guys who did those 30-27s tonight should never score another fight again. I mean, you have to absolutely not know what you are doing to score that fight 30-27.
"There's nothing that I can do. Listen, I'm out here again, I'm talking to the athletic commission, the commission that oversees me and regulates me... fix it."
But he had much kinder words for Referee Herb Dean who was the third man in the cage in the Junior dos Santos vs Cain Velasquez headliner. Per MMA Weekly:"There's nothing that I can do. Listen, I'm out here again, I'm talking to the athletic commission, the commission that oversees me and regulates me... fix it."
"I don't know this guy, we don't hang out, I've never said ‘hi' to him, never said two words to him...Herb Dean is the best referee in the business," White told MMAWeekly.com following UFC 131.
"He's the best referee ever in the history of the sport."
...
"Sometimes these guys get nervous or scared or don't want to be booed, you're the referee, you're in charge in there. You make the decisions. (Junior Dos Santos) says ‘stop the fight', and (Herb Dean) says ‘I'm not going to stop the fight, I think this guy can continue' and sure enough he could," White said.
...
"The other thing that he did earlier was in the Nick Ring fight. When he stopped the fight and then stood them up, he put them back down on the ground, both fighters were arguing with him over what the position was when they started and he said ‘no, what you had was this technique' and said exactly what they had. Half the referees, maybe all the referees, wouldn't know what the (expletive) he meant," White stated.
"If I'm a fighter and I'm in there and my record is on the line, my money's on the line, everything, I want to see Herb Dean standing in that Octagon in between me and the next fighter," White said in closing.
"He's the best referee ever in the history of the sport."
...
"Sometimes these guys get nervous or scared or don't want to be booed, you're the referee, you're in charge in there. You make the decisions. (Junior Dos Santos) says ‘stop the fight', and (Herb Dean) says ‘I'm not going to stop the fight, I think this guy can continue' and sure enough he could," White said.
...
"The other thing that he did earlier was in the Nick Ring fight. When he stopped the fight and then stood them up, he put them back down on the ground, both fighters were arguing with him over what the position was when they started and he said ‘no, what you had was this technique' and said exactly what they had. Half the referees, maybe all the referees, wouldn't know what the (expletive) he meant," White stated.
"If I'm a fighter and I'm in there and my record is on the line, my money's on the line, everything, I want to see Herb Dean standing in that Octagon in between me and the next fighter," White said in closing.
