Just a random thought I had here while listening to Dana's scrum after the post-fight conference. I have heard a lot of bashing of the refs recently, and it is hard to argue because we can all see the mistakes being made, but you have to think that the mistakes are occurring based on some reason. A guy like Josh Rosenthal has gone a bunch of fights without a mistake (that i can remember), but he has been getting killed recently.

I think the bashing of the refs by Dana and others in the UFC company certainly doesn't help because I imagine it adds a bunch of pressure to them when the job itself is already enough pressure. But I wonder if the UFC's current schedule of having multiple cards per month is effecting the refs as well. There are not too many refs who judge the UFC, so I imagine a lot of these guys need to travel from place to place to ref a card. I also imagine they don't get paid a ton, and I do not know what kind of expenses they get paid for them, so maybe they have to take crappy flights and don't have enough money to get comfortable accommodations for a show. We don't see a ton of Herb Dean anymore, and there are really only 5 or 6 referees that seem to be used on a regular basis.

I'm not trying to make excuses for the refs, just suggesting that there may be a real reason why there seems to be mistakes occurring with officiating MMA fights these days. Just a thought.