John McCarthy says Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal should not have been stopped by doctor

Veteran MMA referee and Bellator color commentator John McCarthy believes the UFC 244 main event between Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal was stopped too soon by the doctor.

Speaking on the ‘Weighing In’ podcast, McCarthy was asked by host Josh Thomson what he thought about the controversial doctor stoppage at UFC 244. This is what McCarthy had to say.

“I watched that fight. It drives me crazy because referees many times — and Dan Miragliotta did nothing wrong, absolutely zero — but people need to understand that ringside physicians, they’re doctors. And New York is crazy heavy in the ringside physician has a lot of power. And that’s because of what occurred with Magomed (Abdusalamov) in boxing and the injury he sustained and they were sued. The doctors, they’re very doctor heavy, guys get checked before. The referee actually has to have the doctor there when they’re doing their rules meetings. It’s to the point of almost ridiculous in some ways,” McCarthy said.

“As a referee, I can’t tell you how many times I controlled the ringside physician. I would have a guy who’s cut and the doctor was like, ‘Eh, I think we need to stop this.’ I’d say, ‘Alright, hold on, I want you to think about this. It’s a big fight, both these guys are fighting hard. Yes, he’s cut, I see it, I know its a good cut. These fans came here for this fight. Let’s see if we can let him go another round, let’s see what happens. If it increases in any way, I’ll stop the fight and bring him over to you.’ You do that because the doctor wants to take care of the fighter. That’s what they do. You can go and look. Tyson Fury had his championship fight in Vegas. Look at his cuts on him. He had a cut on his eyelid, that’s always bad. Then he had a huge one above it and that fight went 12 rounds. Jon Jones when he fought Alexander Gustafsson (at UFC 165), I had the doctor telling me, ‘We need to stop the fight,'” McCarthy continued.

“That fight didn’t stop. There’s reasons why. Sometimes you gotta control that guy, tell him, ‘Hey, we’re here working together, I’ll bring him over to you.’ It’s unfortunate (Diaz vs. Masvidal) was stopped. It was totally within the doctor’s rights and Dan (Miragliotta) did nothing wrong. But I wish it would have been handled where someone was there and said, ‘Hey, let’s think about this and try to give him one more round if we can.'”

Do you agree with John McCarthy that Nate Diaz should have been given one more round by the doctor?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 11/7/2019.