Conor McGregor recently got himself in hot water after a physical altercation with referee Marc Goddard at a Bellator event and Frank Trigg believed Goddard diffused the situation in a very professional manner.
Trigg spoke to Fightful's "Showdown" Joe Ferraro about the McGregor-Goddard situation and Trigg thought the Bellator referee handled the encounter as well as anyone could in that position, perhaps better than Trigg would have handled, according to him.
"There is no way I would have been as calm as Goddard was in that position. No way. When I was watching it happen live, Goddard was being pushed over the knocked down fighter, he's trying to check on him before the doctors, Conor pushes him over the fighter. Now you get pushed over trying to save the fighter, and you got to resolve that problem [of Conor pushing]. Now I have a problem and I can't protect this fighter because of this other guy. In the pre-fights, if we tell you to stop, you stop. If you don't you're not going to like the way we stop you because now we're talking about fighter safety. In that situation, you're trying to save the fighter and now I turn around and see someone who's not supposed to be there, that's not supposed to be fighting and he pushes me. What do I do? Marc is the way I hope I would have handled it. He handled that situation perfectly," Trigg said.
While Trigg was not in Goddard's position, Trigg did have to be a little aggressive during a fight he worked a couple of months ago. Trigg had to resort to putting his hands on one of the fighters competing and ended up getting in trouble by the event's lead referee.
"I was working an event about two months ago and Jason Herzog was the lead referee and he was the most experienced referee of the group. Two fighters were getting out of control, they were super aggressive, pushing each other off after breaks. I warned him between the first and second rounds and second and third rounds and they did it again at the start of the third. I had to step in there and put my hand to one of them, they were heavyweights like 6'4", 6'5" and I'm obviously of shorter stature compared to those guys, and I shoved one of them back and said, 'You gt to cut this out or I'll disqualify you and you're winning this fight. You're going to lose this belt if you keep doing this.' So I get reprimanded afterwards. The visual aspect is my sliding my hand up his throat like if I were about to choke him when i was just trying to push him, but he's so sweaty and I'm so short and my hand slides up. So I get reprimanded for being too aggressive and having bad optics," Trigg said.
Goddard was officiating a fight at Bellator 187 and he didn’t take too kindly to the UFC Lightweight Champion hopping into the cage as the fight ended. Goddard told McGregor to leave, which is when thing first got briefly physical before a shouting match occurred between the two.
The full interview with Trigg can be seen in the video above.
