UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski came to the defense of heavyweight star Alex Pereira following UFC Freedom 250.

In the co-main event of the UFC White House card, Pereira fought Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title. After Gane took a competitive first round with more effective striking, he dropped Pereira with a jab in the second round and then finished him off with heavy ground and pound.

However, some of the ground strikes appeared to hit the back of Pereira’s head — and illegal move in MMA — before the finish. Referee Herb Dean, though, did not warn Pereira for any illegal strikes, and Gane went on to win the fight.

Alexander Volkanovski Defends Alex Pereira

Speaking on his YouTube channel, Volkanovski defended Pereira as he felt that he was hit with many back-of-the-head strikes by Gane, and he believes that Dean should have done a better job as the referee to stop the illegal shots from happening in the moment.

“That’s out the window if you hit him once or twice. ‘Back of the head, watch the back of the head.’ You’re going to be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to get disqualified here. I’m not going to keep doing that.’ Then it would have been harder for him to keep hurting him. So I can see why Pereira would be mad,” Volkanovski said (via MMAFighting.com).

“You’ve got to remember, Gane, this is going to happen with fighters. You hurt someone, you’re going for the finish, this stuff’s going to happen. Because you’re trying to go for the finish and you go for it. I’m not saying Gane did it on purpose, but I felt like the ref, maybe you know Herb I love you, mate, but I feel like you should have been pretty vocal, watch the back of the head. I remember looking and seeing a couple of them and he wasn’t. He’s not even telling him to watch the back of the head, I’m like, what’s going on here? Maybe the angle was a bad angle for him, but that’s how many back-of-the-head shots was happening.”

Herb Dean Involved in More Controversy

In addition to the fight with Pereira vs. Gane, Dean was also involved in a controversial finish in the featherweight bout between Vinicius Oliveira and Andre Fili at UFC Vegas 119. Once again, it appeared that the strikes that led to the finish in that fight were to the back of the head, but Dean just stood there and watched with no warning to Oliveira for landing illegal strikes.

Dean is one of the most accomplished and respected referees in mixed martial arts, but even the greats make mistakes, and it really does feel like Dean has had two major misses in the last two cards.

No one wants to see fighters get disqualified, but at the very least, Dean needs to be more watchful and issue warnings when it’s obvious that rules are being broken, or else more fighters will take advantage of breaking the rules if there are no repercussions for them.