So, I kept hearing this name, Steve Mazagoti Sr., popping up whenever I’d watch older MMA fights or browse through some online forums. It felt like you couldn’t go far without someone bringing him up, usually with a whole lot of, let’s say, strong opinions. I got curious, you know? I figured, I spend enough time watching this sport, I should probably try to get a handle on why this one particular referee seemed to live rent-free in so many people’s heads.
My first step was just to consciously pay attention whenever he was the third man in the cage. I started making a mental note, “Ah, it’s Mazagoti.” Then I’d really try to watch what he was doing, or sometimes, what folks complained he wasn’t doing. It wasn’t easy, because you’re also trying to watch the fight, right? But I made an effort. I’d see a stoppage and think, “Okay, was that early? Was that late?” Sometimes, honestly, it just looked like a tough call either way to me.
Then I decided to dig a bit deeper. I went back and watched some of his more, shall we say, talked-about performances. I’d have the fight on one screen and maybe some old discussion threads or articles on another. It was quite the experience, almost like detective work, but without any real clues, just a lot of loud voices. Some people would be absolutely convinced a fighter was robbed or put in danger, and others would be defending the call, or at least saying it wasn’t as bad as all that.
It got pretty confusing, fast. One group screaming “incompetence!” and another yelling “it’s a tough job!” My head was spinning a bit. It reminded me of this one time, a few years back, when my car started making this awful rattling noise. I’m no mechanic, mind you. So I asked a few buddies. One said, “Oh, that’s definitely your heat shield, happens all the time.” Another one, dead serious, told me, “Mate, that sounds like your catalytic converter is about to give up, gonna cost you a fortune.” Then my brother-in-law, who fancies himself a bit of a car whisperer, listened for two seconds and declared, “Loose change in the ashtray.” And you know what? He was right. All that panic, all those expert opinions, and it was just some quarters jingling around.
So, with this whole Steve Mazagoti Sr. thing, I kind of came to a similar place. After a while of watching and reading, I realized I wasn’t going to become some refereeing expert overnight. My “practice” here wasn’t about making a definitive judgment on the guy. It was more about understanding how a narrative gets built. You see a few controversial calls, maybe they get highlighted a lot, and suddenly that becomes the whole story. Every time he stepped in the octagon after that, it felt like people were just waiting for something to happen, good or bad, just to confirm what they already thought.
I’m not saying the criticisms were all wrong, or all right, for that matter. But my big takeaway from this whole exercise was just how powerful perception is. Once a certain idea about someone gets going, it’s like a snowball rolling downhill. It just gets bigger and bigger, and it’s hard to stop, or even to see the actual snowball inside all the snow it’s picked up. So yeah, that was my little journey into the world of trying to figure out Steve Mazagoti Sr. Didn’t get any solid answers, really, just a lot more questions about how we see things, I guess.
