So, I got this thing in my head about “Big” John McCarthy, you know, the famous UFC ref. Everyone always goes on about how he’s the gold standard, the guy who practically wrote the rules with his actions. I figured, okay, let me really dig into this. Not just watch fights casually, but try to understand what made him tick, or if all the hype was real.
My whole idea was to break down his refereeing. I thought, if he’s the benchmark, I need to see why. So, the first thing I did was just pull up a load of his old fights. I’m talking hours and hours of footage, from early UFC days to his later stuff. I basically holed myself up for a bit and just watched.
And it wasn’t just passive viewing, nope. I got myself a notepad. I started jotting things down:
- When did he decide to stop a fight? What were the exact cues?
- How did he handle fouls? Was he consistent with warnings versus point deductions?
- What was his positioning like in the cage? Did he move well?
Yeah, I know, sounds a bit obsessive, right? But I was kind of on a mission. I really wanted to see the patterns, if there were any.
Then, I tried to hunt down interviews with him, or articles where he talked about his philosophy on refereeing. I wanted to get inside his head, understand his thought process. What’s he thinking when a fighter gets an eye poke, or when someone is taking a beating on the ground but still technically “defending”? That’s the stuff you don’t see on the broadcast.
Putting it to the Test (Sort Of)
The really tricky part, or my “practical application” if you wanna call it that, was trying to see if I could anticipate his calls. I’d watch a round with the volume off, trying to make my own judgment calls in real-time. “Okay, I’d warn him for that,” or “Yep, that’s a stoppage for me.” Then I’d rewind and watch with sound, see what Big John actually did. Man, let me tell you, it’s way harder than it looks from the couch. You think something is obvious, but then you see it from his angle, or you realize how fast it all happens. It gave me a new appreciation for the chaos they manage.
Now, why did I even bother with all this? It’s not like I was training to be a ref. The truth is, I had a bunch of time on my hands back then. Got laid off from a job, one of those “company restructuring” things, you know how it is. Suddenly had a lot of empty days. MMA was my main escape, and instead of just consuming it, I started dissecting it. And the refs, they’re such a crucial, often controversial, part of it all. I just got curious about what separates the good ones from the okay ones, and Big John was the obvious starting point.
So, what did I really figure out after all that watching and note-taking? Well, for one, the guy definitely had an aura. You could see the fighters respected him, most of the time. He was generally pretty consistent, which is huge. But you also see that refereeing, even at his level, is so much about subjective judgment. There’s no absolute right or wrong in many situations. It’s about experience, feeling the fight, and having the guts to make a tough call, sometimes one that half the audience will hate.
Yeah, that was my little project on UFC’s Big John. It didn’t make me an expert or anything, but I definitely watch fights with a different eye now. I notice the refs more, the tiny decisions they make, the pressure they’re constantly under. It’s a lot more than just yelling “Stop the fight!” at the right moment.
