‘That’s A Repetitive Thing We’ve Seen With Goddard’

When Jamahal Hill returns to action he’ll get an immediate title shot. He doesn’t want referee Marc Goddard involved in that fight.

Jamahall Hill isn’t interested in having Marc Goddard referee any more of his fights.

Hill is currently sitting on the sidelines healing from an Achilles tear in his ankle. Once that’s back to working order, he’ll get an immediate shot at the light heavyweight title currently held by Alex Pereira. And after he saw how Goddard reffed the Pereira fight against Jiri Prochazka at UFC 295, he has his doubts about the veteran referee.

Goddard got some criticism over stopping the Pereira vs. Prochazka fight early. While most fans accepted the decision after Prochazka came out and supported it, “Sweet Dreams” has seen too many borderline calls from Marc over the past year.

“To me, you give a champion a chance,” Hill said in a new video uploaded to his YouTube channel (via MMA News). “I feel like Jiri should’ve been given a chance to fight in that situation and in that moment to battle through adversity, right? It’s a championship fight, it’s the main event at Madison Square Garden, you don’t stop that, you don’t stop that right there.”

“I’m gonna be honest, that’s a repetitive thing that we’ve seen with Marc Goddard, where I feel the first was with Israel Adesanya [against Pereira],” he added. “It was bad. I mean, it was bad, but would he have came back and won? Probably not, but you still give the champion a chance to go out on his shield and face that adversity.”

“He was quick to stop that fight, he was quick to stop the O’Malley and Aljo fight. Aljo was still cognizant and kicking and trying to push O’Malley off of him. But yet when I fought Glover [Teixeira], he almost let me kill him, literally! The amount of damage that Glover took, even after the third round when I wobbled him and he went down, the fight could’ve been stopped there, the fight could’ve been stopped in the fourth round, but he didn’t seem to feel the need to stop that fight.”

“But in this one, he felt the need to stop,” Hill concluded. “Personally, I don’t want — I love Marc Goddard, he’s a great person, he speaks to me, we’re cool and everything like that, but I don’t want him in there with me whenever I fight Alex [Pereira]. That’s essentially what it is.”

Hill injured his Achilles tendon back in July, and is hoping to return mid-2024. We’ll see whether Marc Goddard is the third man in the cage when he makes his comeback.