Herb Dean responds to Alex Pereira: ‘I owe you guys an explanation about the rules’

Herb Dean doesn’t believe he has anything to apologize about regarding his refereeing of the Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane fight at UFC White House.

Gane stopped Pereira with strikes just 1:27 into the second round, but there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the finish, which seemed to feature “Bon Gamin” landing several big strikes to the back of “Poatan’s” head (watch the highlights here). Pereira released a video on Tuesday complaining about those illegal strikes, saying he asked Dean to watch out for Gane hitting the back of his head, and subsequently accusing Dean of ‘not being a man.’

For his part, Dean didn’t get personal with Pereira. He just gave a refresher course for MMA fans on what ‘back of the head’ means.

“I could tell by some of the comments online that I owe you guys an explanation about the rules and how I refereed the fight,” Dean said in a new video. “First of all, all respect to both fighters. I’m talking about Gane and Pereira. Amazing fight. Okay, so let’s get into it with this rule.”

“The rule we’re we’re talking about is the back of the head, and that’s confusing because it’s different than boxing,” he continued. “And the way we enforce this rule is is we focus on the nape of the neck, and that’s really what the rule should be called. The nape of the neck or occipital junction also covers the spine and covers a [mohawk] line right here with one inch variance to either side.”

“So this is what we’d go over in a rules meeting. I will let them know that this area [neck and mohawk] is a foul, off limits, that this area [sides of back of head] is a fair blow … Hopefully, that’s useful to you guys and clear things up at all.”

We doubt that explanation has fans feeling any better, but perhaps the following video will. It’s a slow motion shot of the final moments of Pereira vs. Gane that shows most of Gane’s punches and elbows landing in the region Dean described as legal.

In the moment at full speed, it looked like Gane smashed Pereira with a non-stop barrage of illegal blows to the back of the head. In slow motion, it drops to two definite illegal strikes. Given the amount of movement and chaos in the finishing moments of the fight, do you say Gane did well only hitting Pereira with two illegal strikes? Or do you believe the dirty bastard was going for more and just missed?