Herb Dean is one of MMA’s most experienced referees and while he’s aware of how frustrated fans often are with how bouts are adjudicated, he maintains that having a human element is important.
Several high-profile
UFC bouts in 2025 saw fouls play a major role in the outcome of the contest, whether it’s critical eye pokes, momentum-shifting low blows or fence grabs that give a fighter a clear advantage during a fight. Though all of these examples are textbook fouls, the punishment administered by in-cage officials is often subjective.
During an appearance on Dominick Cruz’s Love & War podcast, Dean argued points can’t automatically be taken away because every situation is different.
“OK, so I have my hand on your head controlling your head,” Dean said, bringing up an example from the first Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier fight at UFC 182 in which Jones poked Cormier’s eyes. “Perfectly fine. But of course you don’t like that, you don’t want your head controlled and you start moving your head around wildly and all of a sudden you get your eye on a finger. You actually put your eye on a finger because, yeah, you’re doing the right thing but the way you chose to do it, you didn’t choose to back off, you started rolling your head and somehow a finger got near your eye.”
“What I’m saying is that’s why we can’t make things automatic,” he added. “That’s why there has to be discretion because I know you don’t think that makes sense.”
Cruz didn’t back down from his point, telling Dean that eye pokes should always result in a point deduction for the offending fighters. Dean then asked Cruz if low blows should be handled the same way given that they can arguably occur in an even wider variety of circumstances.
“Let’s say your goal is you want to take this guy down, right?” Dean said. “And these things are split-second things decisions these guys make and they make them at real time. So he’s kind of hard to take down, but I know when he’s kicking he’s on one leg and he’s throwing his leg kick. He’s throwing the kick, the target is my leg, I know that this is the perfect time for me to take him down because I’m going to cause a car crash. While he’s doing that kick, I’m going to change levels and penetrate and he’s not going to be able to move back because he’s on one leg.
“Now, because I changed the target [of] this kick, what caused me to shoot was because he stopped to throw a kick and that’s what caused me to shoot. Now, my action that happened after he began his action is what caused the foul, me being kicked in the groin. So one point should be taken away from a guy who kicked?”
Cruz continued to suggest eye pokes are different from other fouls, making the case that groin kicks aren’t as bad because fighters are required to wear protective cups in their shorts. That didn’t convince Dean, who sees the risk of injury as being just as high in either case and the potential consequences equally severe.
“The bottom line is injury is injury,” Dean said. “There’s some fight actually that I referee’d where I took a couple points from the guy and the guy who got kicked, he was hospitalized after that fight. So cup or not it’s an injury and it’s an injury, that’s why we have to take it serious. No one wants to walk around here without an eye. None of us want to talk around here without at testicle either.
“The bottom line is I don’t think that they should be different.”
One point of contention fans and media have long debated is how much accountability referees should have. Should they be required to explain a controversial call to reporters? Should they lose assignments? Should there be some other form of public reprimand?
According to Dean, referees have their own way of handling errors.
“We have our people who we talk to and who hold us accountable and if something that somebody does doesn’t make sense, they’re going to get sat down,” Dean said. “They’re going to need to look at something.”
