Keith Kizer recently recieved an earful from UFC announcer Joe Rogan when judging of the Nam Phan vs. Leonard Garcia seemed to be completely off the mark during this past Saturday’s The Ultimate Fighter 12 finale show.
Kizer responded to the claims about his choice in judges and what, if any, merit Rogan held in his tirade,
“If Joe Rogan wants to get on the air and call people names, that’s his business. I’m not going waste my time responding to that.” Kizer said of Rogan’s verbal lashing.
“They always say that ‘the UFC has nothing to do with judging.’ Well guess what, they’ve got a big fight coming up in Canada called Koscheck vs. Georges St. Pierre – the UFC and Marc Ratner are flying Tony Weeks up there as a judge. C’mon, Joe. How about some honesty? They’ve taken 90% of our officials with them overseas, as they should.” Kizer noted of the UFC’s choice in judges.
Kizer added that his choice in judging obviously has been approved by UFC’s Dana White or they wouldn’t be there. Though he didn’t agree with the scoring completely, he still stands behind their decisions ultimately as that is their profession and they understand how to do their job better than Rogan, otherwise he himself would be a judge,
“That’s not a knock on Dana [White] and Marc [Ratner]; they know what they’re doing. Yeah, I have a problem with how they scored the third round. Definitely. I mean, they’re both very good judges which makes it all the more surprising … There have been judges that we’ve had here who we’ve sent packing. It didn’t work out. Every judge needs to stay sharp, but everyone makes mistakes. You hear so many people cry ‘robbery’ about this and that. I get emails about it all of the time. I go back and watch the fight, and you say to yourself, ‘What? That wasn’t a robbery. The judges got it right!’
Kizer mentioned this isn’t the first time that a judge has been blamed for the outcome of a match noting the Rampage-Machida bout, “A lot of people were saying that about the Rampage vs. Machida fight. Even Dana White said that.”
When it comes to Joe Rogan, Kizer had this to say, “You get people who love to overreact. Obviously there are people who want to feel superior than others, trash others. Maybe they are full of some self-hate, some self-pity, maybe that’s Rogan’s piece as well. There are ways to criticize professionally, ethically, effectively and legitimately. But then there are ways where you are just trying to make yourself look better.”
