Roy Nelson suspended nine months from MMA

The longtime UFC heavyweight Roy Nelson has been suspended for mixed martial arts for nine months for kicking a referee during his last fight.

Roy Nelson was been suspended from mixed martial arts by the Brazilian Superior Justice Court. This punishment comes because Nelson kicked longtime referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy following his most recent win over Antonio ‘Big Foot’ Silva in Brasilia, Brazil. After McCarthy stopped the fight between Nelson and Silva, Nelson pushed McCarthy with his foot out of frustration that the fight was allowed to proceed too long. In his opinion, McCarthy should have stopped the fight before Nelson had to lay out unnecessary punishment on Silva.

Following the fight, Nelson expressed that he considered Silva a friend and was very upset that McCarthy did not stop the fight. In his post-fight interview that night, Nelson said, “It was a push, It was more like ‘dude come on’ and then we had a conversation in the cage and I was like, ‘dude, he was knocked out,’ and he said ‘no, he wasn’t.’ I know what a knockout is, that’s what I do for a living, I know what a knockout is.”

The Brazilian Court was somewhat lenient with Nelson by handing him a nine-month suspension along with a $24,000 fine, The maximum penalty could have been a 25-month suspension and a $40,000 fine according to MMAFighting.com. They went easier on Nelson because he had expressed that he did not have any intention to hurt McCarthy.

Interestingly, there is a clause that could shorten the punishment if Nelson formally apologizes to McCarthy at an official UFC event, such as a fight or a press conference that McCarthy is in attendance. This would shorten the suspension to six months and the fine to $13,700. The suspension in backdated to the day the incident happened, which was September 29.