John McCarthy assessed the stoppage in the Sterling and O’Malley fight

Legendary referee John McCarthy evaluated the actions of his colleague Mark Goddard, who was accused by some of stopping early the flyweight title fight between Aljamain Sterling and Sean O’Malley headlining last weekend’s UFC 292 event in Boston.

“I’ve heard different talks about it being an early stoppage, but I don’t think so,” “Big” John said on another edition of his podcast. “At one point, Aljamain went off for a moment but came right back on. You might want to revisit that. He came back, he was put out again, and he came back in again. He kind of kept going, but eventually it came to a point where he flipped over and started to shut down, and that’s when the shutdown happened. Nothing would have changed. He would have just gotten more damage.”

“It was one of those fights that you try to pre-judge and you have no idea how it’s going to end. Because the way Aljamain was shortening the distance with other strong punchers and grabbing them – that wasn’t even close to happening here. This time Sterling couldn’t do anything about Sean O’Malley’s distance and control.”

Referee Mark Goddard stopped the title fight at the 0:51 mark of the second round after O’Malley sent Sterling into a knockdown with a right jab before finishing the shocked champion in the parterre.

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