Dan Miragliotta's Standup Bombed at UFC Vegas 123. Every Comic Knows That Feeling

The worst standup anybody saw this Halloween happened at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas, and the fellow doing it wasn't even trying to be funny. In Saturday's UFC Vegas 123 main event, Renato Moicano had Tom Nolan's back in the second round with a body triangle locked in, throwing punches and looking for a rear-naked choke. In mixed martial arts, that's about the best seat in the house. Referee Dan Miragliotta looked it over and stood both men up. It was like watching a waiter take your steak away because you were enjoying it.

A few moments later Nolan dropped Moicano with a knee, and in the third round he finished him with punches on the ground for the TKO. Daniel Cormier, on the post-fight show, called it "a referee error" and said it cast "a little bit of a shadow" over Nolan's performance. Din Thomas called the standup questionable and floated the idea of an appeal to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, while conceding that referees have discretion over these things. That's the same thing a club owner tells you about the bringer show, and it means about as much.

Now here's the part a comedy magazine can't leave alone. The crowd had been unhappy with the ground work, and reports have them booing the action and cheering when it stopped. I don't know what was in the man's head, and neither does anybody else, but from the seats it looked like he read the room. Every desperate booker in America has made that call. You've got a man doing fine, technical work that the crowd doesn't understand, and you pull him off for something louder. Laura Sanko said on the broadcast that Moicano was being active in the position, and that was true, but nobody's ever been saved by a technical argument in front of a Saturday night audience.

The strangest review came from Nolan himself, who said he'd asked the referee to stop the punches to the back of his head, not to stand them up. The man ordered a glass of water and got a new car. Moicano, for his part, wouldn't blame anyone. "I had a terrible performance," he said, adding that he couldn't do any damage from the position and that life goes on. A fighter who loses a main event on a call like that and thanks the fans is either a saint or a man who has read his contract.

Fans want Miragliotta investigated, but fans want everybody investigated. He's been around since UFC 78, and he was in the middle of another one at UFC 210 in 2017, stopping Chris Weidman and Gegard Mousasi over knees that the replay showed were legal. Fighters get old and get hurt and go home. Referees, like senators, leave when the hearse comes. Nobody ever lost his job for making the crowd happy, which is how you know it's entertainment and not a sport.