Jump to content

Steve Mazzagatti


lovestruck420

Recommended Posts

What is everyones opinion on this guy. To me I tend to take whites side on this one that the guy doesn't deserve to be anywhere near any mma event let alone title fights.

 

Every fight he officiates has at least one bad call and he generally waits far too long to stop a fight. You need to look no farther than the Jones vs Hamill Fight from the ultimate finale. Hamill was out about 60 seconds prior to Mazzagatti ending the fight.

 

If he's allowed to continue officiating I believe someone is going to get seriously hurt due to his lack of ability to stop a fight when it needs stopped.

 

I have issues with Herb Dean as well but at least he is consistent, You know when Herb is going to stop a fight. With Mazzagatti its just a toss of the dice as to whether he's gonna stop it after one punch or allow the agressor to get of 10 to 15 shots on a knocked out opponent before ending it.

 

What is your opinion?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I tend to agree with you, everytime I see that he is the ref I laugh and then roll my eyes. From what I have read he is one of the nicest people that you could meet in real life...but that does not make him a good referee.

 

Oh don't get me wrong in anyway. He is a nice genuine guy in real life. He's Kind, Charitable, Works with children, does volunteer work. But he is in no way a good referee. I have nothing against his person.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the most ridiculous thing was him asking Hammill if he was ok to continue. That's a deaf guy with blood in his eyes being spoken to. Out loud. Yeah.

 

I posted the same thing as a comment at the 411 forums, that was so stupid. He shouldn't be a referee in a sport where someone can get hurt if you don't do your job right. I'd like to see him get punched out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i personally think hamill was already done and he quit knowing that they were going to give him the win

 

He never quit, i don't think he even knew he won until after he left the octagon. Nobody raised his hand, and all he had was a rushed and (i assume, based on his answers) mistranslated interview. With a dislocated shoulder and a brutalised nose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Every fight he officiates has at least one bad call and he generally waits far too long to stop a fight.

 

With Mazzagatti its just a toss of the dice as to whether he's gonna stop it after one punch or allow the agressor to get of 10 to 15 shots on a knocked out opponent before ending it.

 

This seem to be contridictory, you say that he generally waits to long to stop a fight, but then say how he isent consistent and you dont know if he is going to stop it after on punch or 10-15 punches? So which one is it? If he stops the fight after one punch, people would complain he is stopping the fight to early, if he stops it after 10-15 punches then people complain someone is going to get hurt.

 

You have to some how find that line inbetween the 2 and I think Mazzagatti does that pretty well. Yea there are times where he lets it go a bit too long, that happens with any ref, you cant be perfect on every single match.

 

And with the Hammil fight I dont think he was thinking at the time "Ohh I Bet this guy cant see whats going on with the blood in his eye and is deaf so Ill just keep asking him if he is ok and tell him to defend himself." No he was thinking about doing his job, which he has done hundreds if not thousands of times, and thats asking the person if they are ok when they are getting pummeled on the ground and deciding if they are intelligently defending themselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And with the Hammil fight I dont think he was thinking at the time "Ohh I Bet this guy cant see whats going on with the blood in his eye and is deaf so Ill just keep asking him if he is ok and tell him to defend himself." No he was thinking about doing his job, which he has done hundreds if not thousands of times, and thats asking the person if they are ok when they are getting pummeled on the ground and deciding if they are intelligently defending themselves.

 

So you think it doesn't matter that he has no knowledge of the fighters involved? Or say, any underlying conditions that might affect their ability to comprehend his instructions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So you think it doesn't matter that he has no knowledge of the fighters involved? Or say, any underlying conditions that might affect their ability to comprehend his instructions?

 

Im not saying it doesnt matter at all, yes he needs to know about that so he can protect the fighter the best he can, but it was in the heat of the moment, he had reffed multiple matches that night, and I dont think one think like that makes him a bad ref by an regard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With Mazzagatti its just a toss of the dice as to whether he's gonna stop it after one punch or allow the agressor to get of 10 to 15 shots on a knocked out opponent before ending it.

 

This seem to be contridictory, you say that he generally waits to long to stop a fight, but then say how he isent consistent and you dont know if he is going to stop it after on punch or 10-15 punches? So which one is it? If he stops the fight after one punch, people would complain he is stopping the fight to early, if he stops it after 10-15 punches then people complain someone is going to get hurt.

 

You have to some how find that line inbetween the 2 and I think Mazzagatti does that pretty well. Yea there are times where he lets it go a bit too long, that happens with any ref, you cant be perfect on every single match.

 

And with the Hammil fight I dont think he was thinking at the time "Ohh I Bet this guy cant see whats going on with the blood in his eye and is deaf so Ill just keep asking him if he is ok and tell him to defend himself." No he was thinking about doing his job, which he has done hundreds if not thousands of times, and thats asking the person if they are ok when they are getting pummeled on the ground and deciding if they are intelligently defending themselves.

 

Notice in my post that I said he generally lets fights go on way too long. Generally by definition means most of the time. Not always but most of the time.

 

I have seen maybe a handful of fights that Mazzagatti has reffed that have been clear cut good officiating. He is slow to get in between fighters after stopping a fight, often allowing one or two cheap shots after the fight has ended. He has a huge tendency to help the strikers out in his abuse of standing people up when there is clearly alot of work being done in the grapple.

 

Lets not forget the Anthony Johnson eye poke fiasco.....

 

When one fighter stops fighting altogether, grabs at his eye and starts screaming "My Eye!" You would think that the ref would maybe think twice before calling it a TKO.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Notice in my post that I said he generally lets fights go on way too long. Generally by definition means most of the time. Not always but most of the time.

 

This is exactly my point, if by definition it means most of the time, then how is it a roll of the dice every time? That means most of the time you know he will end the fight later rather then sooner. I fail to see how that is a "roll of the dice everytime".

 

And you bring up the Anthony Johnson eye poke, but look at most eye pokes that happen, its very hard to determine an eye poke from a punch to the face, most refs dont notice it at the time it happens. For a recent exapmle look at the Cro Cop Vs Al Turk fight, Cro Cop got Turk with a poke to the eye and the ref (cant remember who it was) let the fight continue becuase he couldnt see it was an eye poke becuase its very hard to see a poke to the eye in the middle of the fight. Cro Cop then won the fight about 6 seconds later by TKO, then the next day the win got overturned into a no-contest becuase of the eye poke.

 

These things happen and happen to all refs, not just Massagatti, your judging all of his fights based off a very small number of mistakes. You say that you have seen only a handful of fights by Mazzagatti that were clean fights, but I really think its a handful of fights that arent perfectly fine, ill give you the fact that he does let fights run a little long but its not like its really an "My god why hasent he ended this already" Its more like "wow this fight is over, he should end it, ohh and now he called it."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im not saying it doesnt matter at all, yes he needs to know about that so he can protect the fighter the best he can, but it was in the heat of the moment, he had reffed multiple matches that night, and I dont think one think like that makes him a bad ref by an regard.

 

I don't think he's a bad ref, i just think yelling at blinded deaf guys shows he's lacking in common sense somewhat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maz is just flavour of the month on internet forums.

 

Landless, Maz, Dean, Lavigne, Rosenthal, even McCarthy have all had the exact same treatment over the past ten years or so. Lets not even get started on the likes of Kakuda or Shimada in Japan - where fighter saftey comes second to whats best for the promotion at the time.

 

All refs make mistakes - they're in the thick of it in a way that anyone who hasn't been in that possition will not understand. Mazzagatti has refereed thousands of contests over the years - can anyone remember an instance in which a fighter was hurt as a result of his actions? Can anyone name me 20 fights that Maz has screwed up? Can anyone even name 10?

 

The reason that guys like Mazzagatti keep getting selected by state commissions is that they are the best - go take a look at some of the guys on smaller shows that take place in your local nightclub or sports center on the weekend and you'll see what I mean.

 

I'd be willing to bet the house that a fighter gets seriously hurt due to the actions of a ref in a small local show before one of Maz's fights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never thought he was as bad as his reputation on the internetz, but God he botched Jones-Hammill. He should have stopped it already, and failing that he should have gotten his translator in there before talking to deaf guy and expecting a freaking response. It was clear Hamill couldn't continue because of his shoulder, not his nose cut. WEak.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never thought he was as bad as his reputation on the internetz, but God he botched Jones-Hammill. He should have stopped it already, and failing that he should have gotten his translator in there before talking to deaf guy and expecting a freaking response. It was clear Hamill couldn't continue because of his shoulder, not his nose cut. WEak.

 

I thought he made the perfect call at the time.

 

I certainly wasn't aware that Hamill couldn't continue because of his shoulder until Rogan mentioned it in the interview - I think that was the first mention of it on the broadcast.

 

It's not a referee's job to detect non-visible injuries, he's there to make a judgement call based on the information he has to hand. What he saw was a fighter dropping illigal blows on an opponant who could not continue. Besides, there was nothing stopping Hamill from signaling that his shoulder was messed up before Maz left the cage.

 

Here's a question: If Hamill wasn't deaf and had simply kept his mouth shut about the shouder and said that he couldn't continue because the elbows had knocked him dizzy - would the call have been correct?

 

I'm not saying that Jones didn't deserve the win, or the even that the fight shouldn't have been stopped before the illigal blows - but Maz made the right call at the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's funny, and totally not coincidental, that a lot of the Mazzagatti hate started post-Brock/Mir I.

 

Has he made some poor calls? Sure, but what referee hasn't at some point in their career? He gets a lot of undeserved hate from people just because it's the "cool" thing to do. I find it all a bit ridiculous and incredibly sad that after Brock/Mir I and then Dana (who never started until Brock did seemingly to make his star happy, perhaps?) that everyone else followed suit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...