Derrick Lewis, Jason Herzog, and Tallison Teixeira | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC

Chael Sonnen isn’t sure exactly what he saw at the end of UFC Nashville.

This past Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event came to an exciting conclusion when fan favorite Derrick Lewis needed just 35 seconds to score a knockout of the previously undefeated Tallison Teixeira. However, the finish was not without controversy, as some viewers questioned the timing of the stoppage, which came about with Teixeira seemingly still defending himself but also doing so while blatantly grabbing the cage to recover.

On ESPN’s Good Guy / Bad Guy show, Daniel Cormier and Sonnen debated the call, with Sonnen wondering if referee Jason Herzog meant to pause the contest as oppose to stop the bout outright.

“You’ve got to watch the ending of that fight fairly closely to see this, but there is a clear rule infraction—not once, but twice—with the grabbing of the fence,” Sonnen said. “Now, it changed the position, it got him back up to his feet. I need you to understand that, because a lot of times the referee will let an exchange finish and then make a ruling. Not in a case like that where you lose position, the ref must step in right then, he will put Teixeira down, he will put ‘The Black Beast’ on top of him and they’ll continue from there.

“The referee takes a backhand and he gets, like, pie-faced, it was all on accident but he stepped into the mix. I don’t think he intended to call that a TKO. I don’t think he intended to stop the fight. My own conspiracy, but I believe he was stopping the action to offer disciplinary one point for the fence grab. Derrick starts celebrating, crowd starts reacting, referee gets bonked, and that corner’s arguing, it had all the makings of a TKO and my own belief is they just went with it. How’s that? That’s a hot one, but I believe that’s what I saw. Ridiculous? Is it ridiculous by me? I mean, they called it an early stoppage and in my opinion, yeah, because it wasn’t supposed to be a stoppage, it was a break in the action.”

Cormier was on cageside commentary duties for the evening, so he had an up-close look at Lewis’ flurry, Teixeira’s illegal move, and Herzog’s fight-ending intervention. He also had a chance to speak briefly with Herzog afterwards and he doesn’t think there was any confusion on the referee’s part.

“Jason Herzog came to me afterwards, he said, ‘Early?’ I said, ‘No,” Cormier said. “He thought it was early because the guy assaulted him, like grabbed him by the fence, get out of here. Nothing’s scarier for an official, especially one that’s not that big, to have a 6-foot-7 Brazilian heavyweight grabbing you by the chin, pissed off because you stopped the fight.

“All the reasons you said is why I didn’t think it was early. Jason Herzog, stop the action, re-do the position. You can’t do that in a finishing sequence. You can’t do that. Because even if he takes Derrick off, resets them on the ground, and lets them start again, now the guy’s a bit off the hook from being finished. So you can’t do it in a finishing sequence. I think the only action was to stop the fight because Teixeira’s not getting up if he does not stick his fingers into the fence, grab it to pull himself up. So [Herzog] couldn’t have done anything more than stop the fight, so because of that, I agreed with the stoppage.”

To back up his point, Sonnen claimed he experienced a similar situation in his wrestling days when instead of simply being rewarded points for a successful throw, the match was ended in his favor due to confusion over a gesture.

“We’ll never know and Herzog is awesome and a friend, I’m just suggesting that’s what I thought I saw,” Sonnen said. “There used to be touch falls were more common and this was the signal where the referee would hold his hand up. A five-point throw, the referee kind of waved his arm, but he ended in the same position. I threw a guy for five one time, the referee called it five. I nonchalantly stood up, walked to the line, and put my hand up as though he had called a touch fall.

“The opponent got up, came around, shook my hand, and the referee ended the match and called it a touch fall so I’m only sharing with you these things do happen and when you get backhanded and you get pie-faced, I think he stepped in to break the action for the infraction of a fence grab, I don’t think he meant to call it.”

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FLAVOR IN YOUR EAR

On To the Next One. MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck goes solo this week as he picks the winners for UFC Nashville, including what’s next for Derrick Lewis, Gabriel Bonfim, Steve Garcia, and more.

Severe MMA. Seán Sheehan is NOT happy with the UFC Nashville main event stoppage. Check out his take on Lewis’s controversial knockout win.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

I didn’t look at those Conor McGregor pics and you can’t make me.

EXIT POLL

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