In Brief
- Andy Foster, executive director of the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC), has publicly defended referee Herb Dean, who has been criticized by Alex Pereira since his loss to Ciryl Gane at UFC White House on June 14.
- Pereira accuses Dean of letting Gane hit him several times on the back of the head before stopping the fight, and has launched a petition demanding he never be refereed by him again.
- Foster believes the sequence reflected a normal course of the fight and that the real source of Pereira’s frustration is the shot that put him down, not the strikes that followed.
The controversy over the officiating of Alex Pereira‘s loss to Ciryl Gane refuses to die down, more than a month after the fight. Andy Foster, executive director of the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC), has publicly come to the defense of referee Herb Dean, one of the most experienced officials in MMA, who has faced regular criticism since UFC White House.
On June 14, at the UFC event held at the White House in Washington, Ciryl Gane handed Alex Pereira a second-round TKO loss to claim the interim heavyweight title, ending the Brazilian’s ambitions of becoming a three-division UFC champion. Since then, Pereira has repeatedly criticized Herb Dean’s officiating, accusing him of letting Gane hit him several times on the back of the head, an area banned under the rules, before stopping the fight.
“Herb Dean still has my full confidence,” Andy Foster said, as quoted by several American outlets. Present cageside that night, the California official said the sequence of strikes “looked like a normal fight.” He acknowledged that a few shots did land in the prohibited area, but questioned what Dean could have done differently in the heat of the moment to prevent them.
Foster mainly offers a different explanation for Pereira’s anger: in his view, the issue is not the final series of strikes, but the shot that initially knocked the Brazilian off balance and set up the end of the fight. In other words, “Poatan’s” frustration would stem more from the loss itself than from a clear officiating error.
Alex Pereira has not backed down, however. The former two-division UFC champion (light heavyweight and middleweight) has launched a petition asking that Herb Dean never again be assigned to referee his fights, and has said he would refuse to step into the Octagon as long as that referee is assigned to it.
For Ciryl Gane, the California commission’s stance reinforces the legitimacy of his interim heavyweight title, won on one of the most high-profile stages in recent UFC history. The Frenchman, who had already made a title bid against Jon Jones and suffered a close loss to Tom Aspinall, holds in this win over Pereira the biggest victory of his heavyweight career.
It remains to be seen whether the UFC will one day organize the unification of Gane’s interim title with the division’s undisputed belt, and whether Alex Pereira will get his chance at a rematch, with or without Herb Dean in the center of the Octagon.
This fight took place in an unprecedented setting: UFC Freedom 250 was the very first card in the organization’s history held at the White House, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States and the 80th birthday of President Donald Trump, who attended cageside. The night’s main event was a lightweight clash between Georgian-Spanish fighter Ilia Topuria and American Justin Gaethje, won by Gaethje to claim the division’s undisputed title.
The title Ciryl Gane won against Pereira is, for now, only interim: the undisputed heavyweight champion remains Tom Aspinall, who inherited the full belt after Jon Jones retired in mid-2025. Gane and Aspinall have in fact already met once, in a clash at UFC 321 in October 2025 that ended in a no-contest after an accidental injury. A rematch between the two men to unify the heavyweight title is now expected before the end of 2026, which would push Alex Pereira’s hopes of a rematch back even further.
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