Should Josh Rosenthal Have Stopped Lesnar Vs Carwin in the First Round?

There has been a lot of debate regarding the first round of Lesnar VS Carwin. Many have asserted that the referee, Josh Rosenthal, should have stopped the fight early on when Carwin was pummeling Lesnar. Furthermore, these same people have cited an inconsistency regarding stoppage with regards to Lesnar VS Mir from UFC 100. The argument goes, “The ref stopped the fight after a few unanswered shots to Mir’s head but Lesnar took a beating for two minutes and the ref did nothing.”

This is nonsense. First off, the minimum criteria for letting a fight continue is that you have to be intelligently defending yourself. While there doesn’t seem to be a concrete definition of this, the accepted definition is that the fighter has to be moving and doing something while being hit for the fight to continue. One would assume you’d also have to be conscious. Now if you look closely at the Lesnar V Carwin fight, Lesnar was still for maybe 5 seconds, not two minutes. He appears to cover, gets hit, and then starts struggling. In addition, not every punch Carwin threw landed square on Lesnar’s face. Many hit his arms and shoulders. In short, Lesnar moved minimally enough to keep the fight going by any definition. He was not unconscious and Carwin was not beating on him at will.

Contrast this with Lesnar V Mir. At the end of that fight Lesnar was on Mir’s back punching Mir flush in the face. There were 5 or 6 hard, unanswered punches landed directly on his face before the ref saved Mir from having his eye broken. There is no comparison between this stoppage and the Lesnar V Carwin instance. This has nothing to do with whom I like more or who is the franchise player. Put simply, Lesnar defended himself and Mir quit on his knees. Had Rosenthal stopped the fight while Lesnar was still struggling with Carwin I can almost guarantee Lesnar would have killed him for stopping the fight earlier than necessary.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the video’s below and see for yourself.