Oliveira Rips Ref Over Endless Chandler's Fouls

11/17/2024 10:30 AM

Oliveira walked away with a win at UFC 309 but took a few more fouls than he would have liked, a fact he pins on the referee and not notorious rule-bender Chandler.

Charles Oliveira returned to action at UFC 309 with a vengeance, beating on Michael Chandler so badly across their five round co-main event that one judge awarded him the win with 49-45 scorecards (watch the highlights here).

The one round that Chandler won was the fifth, where he caught Oliveira with a big right hand followed by an eye poke that had "Do Bronx" covering his face. When the Brazilian shot for a leg to try and slow down the ensuing onslaught, Chandler hit him with a flurry of hammerfists to the side of the head, many of which were ... let's just say 'extremely questionable' in their legality.

Back of the head rules are enforced in such a way that so long as your fist touches your opponent's ear, referees usually won't stop you. In Chandler's case his glove did indeed touch Oliveira's ear ... but his entire forearm was chopping directly into the back of Oliveira's head and neck like an axe.

None of that seemed to bother Charles, who hugged Chandler and gave him big props after being declared the winner via unanimous decision. But that doesn't mean he didn't notice all the dirty behavior.

"I'm not here to criticize," he said at the UFC 309 post-fight press conference before going on to criticize. "But I wanna tell you something: there were a lot of blows to the back of the head, a lot of fence grabbing. There was also some eye pokes. And I was telling the ref what was going on, I was calling for his attention and nothing would happen. I hoped that he would intervene, but nothing happened."

It seemed like Oliveira was more upset with the referee for not enforcing the rules than Chandler for breaking them in the first place, which is fair enough. Tito Ortiz famously said "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying," and that's become something of a standard amongst some fighters who will grab the fence and the gloves and the shorts and throw wild kicks and outstretched fingers and maybe even fire a few punches to the spine.

It's up to the referee to do something, and at this point we know they won't so they do deserve a good chunk of blame for creating this environment where anything goes.

In this case it's fortunate for Oliveira that the fight wasn't ended on those questionable back of the head blows. UFC CEO Dana White has confirmed he's got dibs on the winner of the Islam Makhachev vs. Arman Tsarukyan lightweight title fight at the start of 2025. Asked if he had any preference on who he'd rather fight, Do Bronx shrugged.

"I'm not looking for either of them," he said. "I'm looking for that belt. Whoever has that belt, that's who I want."

For now, Oliveira will return to Brazil and heal up from a knee injury he came into UFC 309 with. Rumors had been swirling in the weeks leading up to Madison Square Garden that Charles might be forced to withdraw, and he thanked his team for helping him make it into the cage on Saturday night.

"I didn't want to talk about it before, but yes I did have a knee injury," he admitted. "I spent a lot of time actually without training, things were tough and I want to thank first and foremost my team for not letting me back down, letting me quit, letting me stop, and making this happen."