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Give Josh Rosenthal credit. The MMA official admitted he was late in stopping Chris Weidman’s series of punches on Mark Munoz recently.

Weidman delivered an elbow that appeared to knock Munoz out, and followed up with several punches before Rosenthal was able to pull him off.

Now, after watching the fight from his home, Rosenthal admitted to Sirius XM’s TapouT Radio show that he was late in stopping the bout.

I came home and I watched it, and I was kind of like you know, if I was sitting here, watching this on the couch, I probably would have been talking smack about myself. I always say accountability is a huge part of the sport, and you are accountable for your actions. I feel like I was a little show on the trigger.

Rosenthal has been widely-regarded as one of the best referees in the sport along with Herb Dean. He added that, “I don’t want to see guys take unnecessary punishment. I have to step my game up and make sure I’m on point for the next guys.”

On this week’s edition of ESPN MMA Live, Jon Anik and crew recap UFC 116, plus Josh Rosenthal stops by to explain why he didn’t stop the Lesnar-Carwin fight in the first round.

“He took some hard shots when they were against the fence. He was looking for a way out. He was blocking some punches. At one point he tried to spin to push Shane away and took a couple shots. And then again, went for a deep half guard position and took a couple more shots. When he curled up after that is when I commanded him to fight back, which at that point he did, and then he went for feet on the hips to push Carwin away and was able to get to his knees. He pretty much ran with it. He heard — he responded to my commands.”

ESPN MMA Live Archive

If you have trouble playing the video, you can also watch it on ESPN.com. ESPN MMA Live airs on ESPN 2 Thursday nights at 1AM ET/10PM PT.

Ref cams are awesome (wish Dan Miragliotta had been wearing one for Sadollah-Hendricks). Of all the replay angles, this one most clearly shows why Josh Rosenthal stopped the Carano-Cyborg fight. As you can see, Cyborg slips a big shot right through Gina’s arms prompting Josh to call it. Yeah, it sucks that it happened literally at the last second, but it wasn’t a bad stoppage.

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