Anthony Smith believes Yan vs. Sterling outcome proves “referees need to take more responsibility”

UFC light heavyweight Anthony Smith has called out referees for needing to take more responsibility after the Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling fight at UFC 259 last weekend.

As most of us know by now the Yan vs. Sterling fight ended in controversial fashion when “Funk Master” won the UFC Bantamweight Championship due to Yan being disqualified. Sterling was clearly unable to continue and the knee was deemed to be intentional, which is why the decision was made.

Someone who knows a thing or two about this is Anthony Smith. He was put in a similar situation back at UFC 235 when he lost to Jon Jones via unanimous decision, even though he was hit with an illegal knee that could’ve given him a route to a DQ win and the title.

Now, Smith has given his thoughts on the Sterling/Yan situation during an interview with MMA Fighting.

“I think this shows these referees need to take more responsibility,” Smith told MMA Fighting. “I always feel like I’m sh*tting on the referees and I’m really not. You’ve never heard me talk about a bad stoppage, a bad referee, I’ve never done that. But what I have done is criticize them for things they’re unwilling to do. It’s because they don’t want to take the heat. They’d rather put it on the doctor.

“Like you seen, Mark Smith right away just passed the buck right off to the doctor. Here’s your job as a referee — if we’re going to task you with the power and ability to know when someone’s hurt in a legal ending shot and you’re supposed to be trained enough and know enough in this sport to know when that guy’s hurt, that you’re going to stop the fight and you’re going to wave it off and no one says anything, why does the legality of that shot matter? That’s my point. The legality of the shot shouldn’t matter. If that knee was legal, he would have stopped that fight right afterwards. Had his knee come up, he would have stopped that fight because Aljo wouldn’t have continued.”

What do you think of these comments from Anthony Smith?