In an ideal world the precious minute between each round in the UFC would be an oasis of calm – a chance for the fighters to get their breath back and rest their weary limbs, rehydrate and have their wounds tended to, while receiving valuable words of encouragement, support and advice from their cornermen.
However, in this article we’ll show that’s not always how things pan out as we look at 15 examples of the kind of weird and woeful, crazy and unexpected moments of high drama that can happen inside the Octagon after the round ends.
Yoel Romero – Stoolgate
Rarely has there been a more blatant attempt to bend the rules than when Yoel Romero’s corner attempted to buy him extra time before the start of the third round of his fight with Tim Kennedy at UFC 178 in 2014.
In the closing stages of the second round Kennedy had rocked Romero with big punches, leaving him barely able to stand and on the verge of being finished if the bell hadn’t sounded first.
Slumped on his stool afterwards, Romero’s corner desperately tried to revive their fighter, but just a minute’s break looked unlikely to be enough.
However, the cut man then applied too much vaseline to a nasty gash above Romero’s eye, which caught the attention of referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy, who ordered his corner to remove some of it.
Romero’s corner then appeared to stall for time, hesitating and then slowly removed the vaseline, while an outraged Kennedy protested that the fight should already have restarted and Romero shouldn’t still be resting on his stool.
In total Romero had over 30 seconds extra on the stool and then paced around regaining his bearings further before the third round got underway, at which point the rejuvenated ‘Soldier of God’ would go on to TKO Kennedy less than a minute later.
