Referee Herb Dean Made the Right Call, Even if It Was an Unpopular One

Dan Henderson landed the uppercut, and Fedor Emelianenko went face-first into the canvas. His legs went limp beneath him. His arms lay flat at his sides. It was a posture that only lasted a moment before he regained enough of his senses to turn to his back and offer something that resembled a defense, but a moment was long enough.

Once Herb Dean saw him laid out on the canvas, he had a decision to make and not much time to make it in. That's the hard part about being an MMA referee. There's no time to count to ten and look in a fighter's eyes. The longer you stand there pondering the current state of his consciousness, the more chances there are for him to get the last remaining brain cells knocked out of his head.

It's a business of snap judgments, which necessarily mean it's a business of flawed judgments. But in the Sears Centre on Saturday night Dean made the right call at the right moment, even if many fans wish he'd made a different one.