Benoit Saint-Denis’ manager is not happy with Vyacheslav Kiselev’s refereeing at UFC 267, but not for the same reasons as most.
Saint-Denis (8-1 MMA, 0-1 UFC) dropped a lopsided unanimous decision to Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos this past Saturday and took an incredible amount of damage.
The Frenchman was rocked by a dos Santos right hand in the second round and took an array of unanswered punches. While Saint-Denis showed plenty of heart by somehow staying on his feet, commentators Daniel Cormier and Paul Felder were losing their minds at how Kiselev didn’t stop the fight.
But the punishment didn’t stop there. Less than a minute into the third round, Saint-Denis was poked in the eye and Kiselev only gave him 45 seconds to recover, despite Saint-Denis claiming he couldn’t see.
And that’s what his manager, Guillaume Peltier, was more upset about than anything else.
“To tell the truth, whether or not to stop the fight (in the second round) is not really what gives me a bitter taste,” Peltier told MMA Junkie. “Where I am angry is the finger in the eye. We know the rules. We know that if the fighter can no longer see, the doctor must intervene. Benoit has said several times that he can no longer see. We also in the area shouted it and yet the referee made him go back to the fight while Benoit tells him that he can’t see. This is unacceptable and played an important role in the third round. Regardless, we are proud of Benoit. We know our axis of work.”
Peltier admitted Saint-Denis’ corner could have stopped the fight at the end of Round 2, but knowing his fighter, he knew he could keep fighting until the end.
“It’s a complicated subject because on one hand, I would like to say that (Kiselev) should have stopped the fight in the second round,” Peltier said. “But on the other hand, the fight proves the opposite. If the fight was finished by TKO in Round 3, we too could have stopped the fight before. But we know Benoit and we know his ability to go through hell and come back, and that’s what he did – he came back in the third round.”
Kiselev, who was scheduled to referee the main card opener between Magomed Ankalaev and Volkan Oezdemir, was pulled from his assignment after what happened in the dos Santos vs. Saint-Denis bout.