Michael Bisping recalls 'madness' of watching ref allow Bobby Green to get unnecessarily pummeled at UFC Austin
UFC Hall of Famer Michael Bisping believes Bobby Green took too much unnecessary damage in his loss to Jalin Turner.
Green (31-15-1 MMA, 12-10-1 UFC) was knocked out by Turner (14-7 MMA, 7-4 UFC) in this past Saturday’s UFC on ESPN 52 co-headliner in which where he took plenty of unanswered strikes. Turner floored Green with a one-two combination then had to rain down plenty of follow-up shots before referee Kerry Hatley finally stepped in.
Hatley has taken a lot of heat for letting Green absorb too much damage. Bisping, who was on commentary duty, wants to give Hatley the benefit of the doubt but believes he needed to do a much better job of assessing the fight-ending sequence.
“He is pretty much out, unconscious right there, but of course the referee didn’t stop the fight,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “Jalin Turner follows him down, boom, boom, a few more punches, gets on top of him, Bobby Green is face down on the canvas, and Jalin Turner has no choice but to continue to rain down potentially – well very, very bloody traumatic blows. Not potentially, they were heavy punches. They were knockout power punches, one after the other after the other and the whole arena, all of the commentators, everyone around the octagon was in shock.
“The referee, I don’t know his name and he is a good referee, he is OK, but that was madness. That was insane. Bobby Green was unconscious, and he took about nine or 10 unnecessary blows. The commission have got to have a word with that guy. Maybe from his angle he couldn’t quite see it right. Maybe he couldn’t see that Bobby Green was unconscious, but he did go unconscious a couple of times, and some of the punches brought him back around.”
Like fellow commentator Daniel Cormier, Bisping called the stoppage one of the worst he’s ever seen.
“Fighter safety is supposed to be paramount,” Bisping continued. “That was not good. That was an awful stoppage. One of the worst, if not the worst that I can remember in recent memory. It might not be the worst, but from what I can remember and maybe it’s recency bias, that was the worst stoppage I’ve ever seen, man.”
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