Do not wait Marco Goddard to referee the UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards‘ next fight – or any of his fights.
Edwards (21-3 MMA, 13-2 UFC) defends his title in a rematch against Belal Muhammad (23-3 MMA, 14-3 UFC) in the UFC 304 headliner on July 27 at Co-op Live in Manchester, England.
The renowned referee refereed some of the biggest fights in UFC history and had names like Colby Covington disagrees with him on certain stoppages. But that doesn’t mean Goddard won’t referee Edwards’ fights. The Brit has a very valid reason.
“Here is a classic case: Leon Edwards. You’ve never seen me referee Leon Edwards in the UFC, and you never will. Why? Because I was Leon Edwards’ first MMA coach,” Goddard said on Overdogs Podcast. A long, long, long time ago, when he was just an amateur. But again, the element of common sense for me, though the connection is this – who knew when Leon first walked into that gym as an inexperienced amateur, an inexperienced rookie with no experience? Now look at him.
“UFC Welterweight World Champion, but you never saw me refereeing him, and you never will because we just keep it out of the way. I just don’t want any hassle and I don’t want to be put in a situation where I’m making a call that could go against him, so it’s both sides.”
There are other fights that Goddard chose not to referee, but for personal reasons. He gave the example of Israel Adesanya and when he refereed his title fight against Alex Pereira at UFC 281. Pereira scored a permanent TKO over Adesanya, who immediately protested the stoppage. Adesanya insisted it was early, but Goddard answered his call.
“Do you remember when Israel Adesanya fought Pereira for the second time in Miami? I specifically requested not to do this fight,” Goddard continued. “The reason I asked not to fight was because I was thinking about Izzy, I was thinking about him. He and I are fine. I refereed him since then, I refereed his fight with Sean Strickland, but I actually withdrew because what I didn’t want was for Izzy to make me go into the locker room.
“I was thinking about the fighter then. ‘This is his night, it’s all about him.’ I didn’t want to go into that dressing room and have it have any kind of negative connotation or anything like that. So, I thought that the right and fair thing for him to do is stay out of the fight and hand it over to another referee, and I asked the committee not to do that. There have been some incidents where there are certain fighters that I would rather not (referee) for personal reasons.”
For more information on the card, visit the MMA Junkie events hub to UFC 304.
