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John McCarthy lauds Nevada for ruling Kevin Holland vs. Kyle Daukaus no contest

Bellator commentator and former referee John McCarthy thinks the decision to rule Kevin Holland vs. Kyle Daukaus a no contest was fair.

Holland’s co-main event matchup with Daukaus at UFC Fight Night 193 on Saturday was ruled a no contest after an accidental clash of heads caused a fight-ending sequence in favor of Daukaus.

Holland (21-7 MMA, 8-4 UFC) was visibly hurt from the clash, crashing down face first to the canvas. Referee Dan Miragliotta thought of intervening for a second, but he let the action continue and Daukaus (10-2 MMA, 1-2 UFC) capitalized when he secured a rear-naked choke just moments later to make Holland tap out in Round 1.

McCarthy thinks Miragliotta should have never let the fight continue and that it was on him to immediately pause the action after seeing Holland clearly impacted by the clash.

“The real telling part was, you don’t know what the referee sees,” McCarthy said on his “Weighing In” podcast. “So I’m looking at it and I’m like, that one you should have seen. Based upon where you were at, the position that he was at and the way that Kevin fell when they came apart. He went face first; he was out. When he hit the ground, he woke up. It was like getting punched. He got hit on the jaw. It wasn’t that it was his forehead or anything like that, but it snapped his head, and he was not in any way prepared for that, and it put him out. But the telling part was when Dan said, ‘I saw it. I rushed in there, but then he started fighting.’ This is where all MMA referees make mistakes.

“This is not, ‘Oh, he’s fighting, let it go.’ You don’t do that because if you see the head clash – many times you’ll see a head clash, and neither guy responds to it at all. So instead of stopping the action, if there’s no cut, no damage that you see, you’ll come close to them and say, ‘Watch your heads inside’ or something to that effect because you can see it did not effect either fighter. But if you have anything that shows there’s an effect and a guy getting knocked down, if you say, ‘I saw that was a clash of heads,’ and you see a guy getting knocked down, it’s time to go stop time. No matter that he comes back out of it because I’m gonna get him up, and I’m gonna take him over to the corner and let him clear out the cobwebs if there is that there, and I’m gonna have the doctor look at him, and if the doctor says he’s OK, we’ll put him back into the fight.”

After the fight ended, commission officials and referees ringside discussed the head clash and upon reviewing the replay, they deemed the headbutt as accidental, and the fight was ruled a no contest.

Despite the fact that McCarthy thought the action should have been stopped as soon as Holland and Daukaus clashed heads, he commends everyone involved for eventually making the right call.

“Now in the state of California, we can go and look at that instant replay and we can reverse it,” McCarthy said. “Same as now with what Nevada has implemented with their ringside official being the replay official. They handled this, and it’s OK if it takes more than one person to come up with the idea of, ‘This is the direction we need to go’ as long as that direction is the right direction for the fighters. So I’m very happy that they have Herb being that replay official. I’m happy that you saw Jeff Mullins, who is in charge of the fight for the state of Nevada. He was definitely a part of it and talking to them.

“You saw other officials coming in and giving information about what they saw, which in the end forced or made – because we kind of thought that Dan was gonna go with, ‘Nope, I’m gonna leave it the way it is,’ but all of that input told him, ‘No, I need to make this a no contest,’ and that was the right call for what occurred in this fight. Kevin Holland did not deserve to lose the fight based upon being hurt by a clash of heads. That’s not within the legality of the sport, and so he shouldn’t lose based upon the injury that he suffered and the damage that he suffered from that which put him in a situation where the choke ends up making him tap later on. So in the end, the right thing was done, and that’s good for the sport of MMA.

“I thought overall great job by the state of Nevada and the athletic commission in allowing all those officials, all those people to come together and to talk about what’s the best thing, not only for the fighters, but for the sport.”

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