The FF-Files: Pulling the Plug on the Party

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“Now just because no one likes you don’t mean they don’t want you around, they wanna throw things at you, and for an encore they push you down, push you down.” – Electric Six, “Pulling the Plug on the Party”

On Dec. 5, 2009, “The Ultimate Fighter: Season 3” competitor Matt Hamill came into the Finale show of “TUF 10” celebrating a massive head kick knockout of Mark Munoz on his recent highlight reel. That dramatic punting—one where a friend in the building that night briefly worried that Munoz had been slain—propelled him into an encounter with a young but still somewhat untested New Yorker named Jon Jones. Hamill used that momentum to pull off the biggest win of his career with a first-round stoppage of sorts. It was not a bloodied, battered Hamill that appeared the victor, as Jones, in the throes of passion and fury to secure a finish, hammered “The Hammer” with a number of illegal 12-6 elbows on the dome. Referee Steve Mazzagatti had seen enough, and ruled that the damaging fouls forced him to disqualify the youngster. Some 15 years later, it still remains Jones’ only pro loss.

For years, Jones—and his promoting organization of the Ultimate Fighting Championship—sought some way to change that verdict. It was Jones inflicting all the damage, who firmly believed that he had already dispensed enough punishment such that the improperly angled elbows should not play a factor. In the last several years, traditionally cropping up around one of his increasingly rare appearances, chatter about Jones’ lone loss develops into a conversation about what it would take to overturn that DQ. We at Sherdog, the sport’s authority on mixed martial arts since 1997 and the originator of the first comprehensive MMA record keeping database, have something to say about this farce. The disqualification will never be changed on Jones’ Fight Finder profile.

We cannot stress this enough: this result will not be changing, no matter which entity exudes pressure to revert it to a null ruling of a no contest. We greatly respect the wisdom of California State Athletic Commission chief Andy Foster, who has done a great deal for the sport and continues to do so every day. However, his recent, mixed thoughts on the removal of the 12-6 elbow rule and Jones’ resume blemish, do not hold to his typical standard of greatness. To be supportive of removing a loss from well over a decade ago because the ruleset transformed is borderline unconscionable from a rulemaking standpoint. The change is not ex post facto.

The Latin term “ex post facto” or “after the fact” involving a law or regulation means just that: a new rule or rule change having an effect on past results. The changes of 12-6 elbows and the downed fighter distinction passed by the Association of Boxing Commissions and most states in the U.S. are not retroactive. They do not apply to anything that has already happened, and there is good reason for that. The rules were what they were at the time, and fighters had to obey or violate them at their own peril. To interpret it any differently would be unfair for the overwhelming majority in compliance with those rules since that rule was made in 2001. Anything otherwise would be rewriting history, and the slope is more slippery than Hatcher Pass after a Thanksgiving blizzard.

It seemed prudent to provide a short list of results grandfathered into our database that would change before we even considered reverting Hamill-Jones to a no contest. We should preface by noting that none of these will be changing, period. Yoshihiro Nakao smooched Heath Herring ahead of their K-1 Premium 2005 Dynamite!! event, and Herring responded reasonably by knocking Nakao’s block off. Both fighters were disqualified in the ring, and cooler heads quickly realized that the DQs should offset to force a no contest. Realistically, this fight should not be on Fight Finder, because it never actually happened, but it is a significant part of history that we deign to ever remove.

UFC 309: Jones vs Miocic. Saturday at 10 ET on ESPN+. Order Now!
At One: Century Part 1 in 2019, Angela Lee defended her 115-pound throne against Jingnan Xiong, where she picked up the fifth-round stoppage win. To open up the submission, Lee dumped Xiong square on her head, in open defiance of One’s very clear rules against spiking, suplexes or otherwise slamming a fighter on their noggin. To this day it is still unclear why One did not throw the book at Lee, given that they had previously disqualified her brother, Christian Lee, for suplexing Edwards Kelly the year prior. While Lee’s slam should have undoubtedly been declared a DQ, Sherdog plays no part in enforcing rules that were not otherwise enforced in the ring or cage. We are not an appeals board; we are not a governing body and we do not interpret results. Lee got away with that one, and given how much time has passed, we would not honor any subsequent review. It would also be the same for Johnny Walker repeatedly slugging Ryan Spann in the back of the head at UFC Fight Night 178 in 2020: while we might individually cry foul, the official appeal is all that would matter so long as it was timely.

At its core, the question of Jones’ loss status is one of statute of limitations. In layman’s terms, cases and claims have a maximum time frame to be considered. If the statute of limitations is three years for a contract issue in a certain state, the parties have upwards of three years to bring a claim before it is too late. While the MMA record community is not based on the American legal system, there are facets we can pull from to address certain issues. At some time, we become too far removed from an instance to look back at it. In the legal system, there are only a few crimes without any statutes of limitations—one can look them up—and we have yet to encounter results so unusual that a review decades later is not only appropriate but warranted.

Put very simply, if Team Jones wished to challenge the fight result, the time to do so would have been within a year to 18 months of it happening. There is not a hard-and-fast rule that applies with a specific range (12 months) without exceptions, because the MMA world is a different animal entirely. We at Fight Finder are aware of hardships and understand the difficulties of raising these issues, especially in areas devoid of federation or commission oversight. Jones encountered none of these complications, and even benefited from the first UFC use of instant replay in hopes of providing a different angle Mazzagatti may have missed. Nevada State Athletic Commission Keith Kizer backed Mazzagatti’s call, and that was that.

There should not even be a debate about this result, one that happened a month shy from 15 years ago. It has become a promotional talking point—more than one UFC official has hinted at Jones being unbeaten, which is technically correct or incorrect depending on the definition of the word “unbeaten”—to build Jones up, but that is wholly unnecessary. Even with the ‘L,’ Jones’ ledger sells itself. “Bones” posts the most championship wins in UFC history, one of the longest victorious stretches ever mustered, and many of his accolades at 205 pounds may never be passed. It is not a disservice or disrespectful gesture to decline Jones having his loss wiped off his record. It is a matter of history.

If you seek a lengthier list of results that we would sooner hear appeals for but still not grant, send your requests, as well as any other Fight Finder-related inquiries, to [email protected].