Chris Curtis continues to shred UFC referee over controversial TKO loss weeks after last-second defeat
Yesterday at 01:15 PM
From eye pokes to head clashes, popular UFC middleweight contender Chris 'The Action Man' Curtis has experienced his fair share of bad luck inside the octagon.
Yet arguably the most controversial moment of his UFC tenure arrived only recently, on the first UFC event of 2025, when he suffered a last-second TKO stoppage loss to Roman Kopylov.
And when we say 'last second', we mean literally the last second, with referee Mark Smith waving off the contest at 4:59 of the third round after 'The Action Man' was dropped by a head kick.
Chris Curtis continues shredding UFC referee over last-second loss
Whilst Chris Curtis was by no means winning his fight against Kopylov at UFC Fight Night: Dern vs Ribas 2 on January 11, he certainly wasn't knocked out when referee Mark Smith called a halt to the contest with one second to go.
Three weeks after that controversial stoppage loss and Curtis is still seething over his professional record now sporting a fresh TKO defeat, as he shredded Smith on the latest episode of Weighing In.
"God dammit, like the fight's over in one f****** second bro, I don't know what the score is. I just don't understand why you give me a stoppage loss with one second left when I'm not in danger, I'm not knocked out, and I'm looking at you.
"I've had so many issues with really stupid refereeing in the UFC and it's frustrating when we talk about this in the back… And then you proceed to do none of what we talked about in the back [in the fight]."
Curtis, despite walking away with over $200,000 in fight money, still believes that when he steps into the octagon with Smith as the third man, he's fighting two fights: one against his opponent, the other against the referee.
"I just feel like I'm constantly fighting against bad luck and my opponent, bad luck and bad refs, it's just so frustrating… I've had great refs [call my fights] but I feel like Mark Smith continually f**** up, it's just frustrating.
"Man, it's hard for me to be in a fight and comfortable with a ref that I know is half-on, half-off… I love fighting, and if I could not have Mark Smith as my ref ever again then I'd be okay with that, it's hard as a fighter to be in there with a ref who you don't trust."
Chris Curtis' last-second TKO loss divided the MMA community
The decision to end the fight at the 4:59 mark was so controversial that it even provoked a rare argument on the broadcast desk, with Paul Felder and Din Thomas disagreeing over Smith's actions.
"That fight should not have been stopped," stated Felder, arguing that "There's a second on the clock and Kopylov is nowhere near him, I wish he would have had the opportunity to at least stand and have the decision read as opposed to being a TKO."
"I'm gonna side with Mark Smith here," responded Thomas: "It's not his job to make sure that the fighter gets a moral victory [and] it's not the referee's job to watch the clock."
"The guy is still getting up to his feet, there's no fighter near him," rebuked the former UFC fighter, "Even if the clock isn't there, you've gotta let it go!"
Veteran official 'Big' John McCarthy would also later come to Curtis' defense, stating that it was a 'bad stoppage' and that he'd have allowed the fight to continue for those final milliseconds.
"You've gotta stop the fight when the person cannot defend themselves, and at that moment, there was nothing to defend against.
"If he's out, stop the fight. But if he's not, and his opponent's walking off and you know I've already heard the clapping of the boards. Counting off in my head if you're doing the job correctly… I don't stop the fight [there]."
