Referee Marc Goddard is adamant he handled his officiating of the UFC 245 main event the best way he could.
It was a back-and-forth competitive fight between UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington, but also one that involved numerous low blows and eye pokes, making Goddard a busy man on the night.
With the clock winding down, Usman dropped Covington twice, and Goddard decided he had seen enough. An infuriated Covington stood up right away, blasting Goddard for the early stoppage. He took aim at his profession, and didn’t hold back when it came to bashing the veteran referee’s decisions in the fight.
But Goddard stands by his stoppage of the fight. Speaking to Dan Hardy on “Listen!,” Goddard broke down why he thought it was the right decision to intervene, despite there being less than a minute left in the championship fight.
“(It was a) difficult fight. I know I handled it on the money, to a T,” Goddard said. “I’m seeing things unfold, and I see Colby put down twice in rapid order – plus 24 minutes of back-and-forth before that. So there’s a lot of damage sustained. Then I see him go down, and obviously he stays in that turtle position started on the double, then pulling his hands back. This is where everything will narrow in for me. I’m now firmly put in the spotlight. I have a decision to make and I’m trying to assess this. I have to assess this, real time, with everything I saw, etc.”
Heading into the fifth round, one judge had Usman up, one had Covington up, and the third judge had it tied at two rounds a piece, making the fifth round pivotal.
But Goddard said fighters’ safety comes first, and had he let the fight continue, he would have likely received heavy criticism had Covington gotten knocked out cold or suffered unnecessary extra damage.
He received criticism just a week later when many thought he let Frankie Edgar sustain too much damage in his first-round TKO loss to Chan Sung Jung at UFC on ESPN+ 23. The difference was, Goddard said, Edgar had not just gone through 24 minutes of a barn burner.
“I’m looking at Colby, and then I see the damage he’s sustained, the two knockdowns, etc.,” Goddard said. “When you are face down, when I can’t see you, I can’t read you. It’s difficult for me to … that exasperates everything further. So I’m now trying to compute in my mind: ‘Are you there, (or) are you not?’
“Could I have let that fight go on? Yeah. Could have I stood back and let it go on? Yeah. Should I have let it? And that’s the narrative here. Should I have? And that’s the point I make when I’m assessing what happened, assessing the position he’s in: two knockdowns, (and) he’s being punched.”