Yep Mario Yamasaki.  MMAJunkie broke the bad news that Mario Yamasaki would be in charge of the title fight between Silva and Belfort.  I know referees do not have it easy, but I wanted to show what occured at the hands of Mario Yamasaki during the Barry-Beltran fight.  I will describe briefly below the happening during the Beltran-Barry fight at the Fight For the Troops event over the past weekend, where, yes, Mario Yamasaki was in charge of the match.

I dont have a link to the video, but you can go to UFC.com and "buy" it.  Anyhow go lets go to about 1:38 left of round 3.  This is when Beltran got an accidental eye poke.  Beltran was visibly in pain and Mario Yamasaki yells "stop, stop, stop.......TIME" as he motions time out with his hands, then goes towards Beltran.  Mario's next word's to Beltran are what is the most amazing.  Mario looks at Beltran and says..."what happened?...your leg?...your legs?".  Beltran looks disgustingly at Mario and says emphatically, "NO, my EYE!!!!!"

So, basically what happened is Mario had NO CLUE what had just happened and then called time out because "something was wrong" with Beltran.  This has happened before with Mario, Herb Dean. as well as other referees.  I know referees get a lot of criticism and their job is very difficult, but they cant call time out in a mma fight when they thought someone got hurt.  If Mario thought Beltran's leg was hurt. then the ONLY option there would of been to call the fight over due to tko injury.  Calling time out to figure what is wrong is not an option.  If Beltran was injured due to leg kicks, then Mario just gave him sufficient time to recover and get back into the fight.  Just imagine if Mario did this everytime someone got hurt or knocked down. This guy needs to pay attention more.

Anyone else notice this??.