On the latest episode of ‘Weighing In’ podcast hosted by Josh Thomson and Big John McCarthy, they discussed referee stoppages and Josh brought up referee Mike Beltran’s interview with Ariel Helwani from a few months ago. Beltran said his most memorable fight was Thomson vs Diaz.
Big John McCarthy then told a backstory to that fight. He said Beltran was extremely nervous because it was his first UFC main card fight. He had only worked previously in UFC as a judge, and referee for prelims only.
Josh says “for some reason I thought Mike Beltran referee’d a lot more fights in the UFC.. ”
Big John: “You want to know the truth? Here’s the truth.... They (UFC) didn’t like his mustache.”
“That’s why you don’t see him traveling around with the UFC most of the time, in fact now they make him tuck it in because they don’t like it. They think he’s trying to bring attention to himself, which he’s not, I’ve had major discussions with Mike, at one point I told him, I talked to some people in the UFC and they said “tell him to get rid of the mustache, we would love to use him in Mexico, he speaks Spanish” so I tried talking to him, I said hey it’s just facial hair dude, cut it off, let them get to know you and you can grow it back. And he replied to me “it ain’t f*cking happening John” so I said it’s facial hair, he said “I’m a grown ass man, ain’t no one going to tell me how I can look” so I looked back at him and said “you know, you’re right. I’m not going to tell you to do that ever again.”
Honestly I do find his gigantic mustache a bit distracting when he’s reffing a fight. I can actually see why Dana doesn’t like it and would want Beltran to get rid of it.
He has a weird thing about facial hair. Roy Nelson and Dave 'Pee-Wee' Herman also went through something sorta similar. And Dana tried paying Clay Guida to cut his famous hair years back.
It is a distraction in all honesty. It was cool until it became 3’ long on each side. It can prevent him from effectively stopping fights and intervening when necessary in my opinion. I agree though, great ref. He needs to go to WWE if he insists on growing it to the ground.
Honestly I do find his gigantic mustache a bit distracting when he’s reffing a fight. I can actually see why Dana doesn’t like it and would want Beltran to get rid of it.
You're distracted, during a fucking fight, by a refs facial hair? Are you a fucking mongloid?
Yeah I love Beltran's mustache and love that he stands his ground on the issue but no different then other companies in numerous professions that have restrictions on facial hair, haircuts, tattoos etc.