On Sunday night, the UFC touched down in Austin, Texas with an exciting night of fights. In the main event, Hawaii’s Yancy Medeiros stepped into the cage with fan favorite finisher Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.

Had Medeiros won this fight, he likely would have surged into the welterweight top-10. Regrettably for the Hawaiian and his fans, he was put down by a cracking Cowboy right hand, and the fight was waved off with just two seconds remaining in the first frame.

Unsurprisingly, Medeiros wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to hang in there for those remaining two seconds, regroup on his stool, and return for a second round. Yet referee Herb Dean – one of the most respected officials in the game – wasn’t having it.

In a post fight chat with the media, Medeiros joked that he wished he’d had a more liberal referee, say, Mario Yamasaki, who is known for his frivolous gambling with fighter’s braincells.

“Hats off to Cowboy, he caught me with a nice right hand,” Medeiros said. “Two seconds left, Herb Dean stopped it. I felt I could have continued, but he didn’t feel that way. We had an inside joke, my team and I, I was like ‘fuck where’s Mario [Yamasaki] when you needed him!’ But I was just fucking around, you know. I mean, he caught me. I kept my head on the center line and he just caught me with that nice punch. It is what it is.”

“I know the referees are there to watch for our safety,” he added. “Obviously Herb Dean didn’t see that I was safe enough to continue. So, his call. Gotta learn, gotta make my adjustments. I’ll be back. Hats off to Cowboy.”

Do you think Yancy Medeiros should have been allowed the opportunity to survive until the end of the first round, or did Herb Dean make the right call?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/19/2018.