Dan Miragliotta Stood Up Moicano vs. Nolan With Moicano in Back Control: What the UFC Has Actually Said
Tom Nolan finished Renato Moicano with elbows 88 seconds into the third round on Saturday at the UFC Apex, and almost nobody wants to talk about the finish.
They want to talk about what happened a round earlier.
What Happened
In the second round Moicano took Nolan down and locked in a body triangle from back control. Referee Dan Miragliotta ordered a stand-up and restarted the fighters on their feet, with Moicano still in the dominant position.
No outlet has published a control time or a clock reading for the stand-up, so the honest description is that Moicano had the back for a meaningful stretch of the round and then did not.
On the restart, Nolan landed a knee that badly hurt Moicano and nearly finished him before the horn. Early in the third he landed another, took top position and ended it at 1:28 by ground-and-pound.
The Broadcast Booth Did Not Hide
“I just don’t think a ref should take anybody out of mount ever, should never take anybody off of the back like that,” Daniel Cormier said on the call. He also said a “referee error ultimately casts a little bit of a shadow over what was a beautiful performance by Tom Nolan.”
Laura Sanko pushed back on any suggestion that Moicano had gone inactive: “That is being active in that position. You can’t sit there and punch all the time.”
Din Thomas was the most measured of the three: “I don’t know if the outcome would have been any different without the standup.”
Nolan Says He Was Reporting a Foul
Fans online demanded Miragliotta be investigated. Nolan’s account is more mundane and probably closer to what happened.
“To be clear, when I was talking to the ref, I wasn’t asking for a standup. He was punching me in the back of the head. I was just telling the ref,” Nolan said afterward.
“I was just letting Dan know, like, the rules are we can’t punch in the back of the head. If that wasn’t a rule, that’s fine. But it is a rule, so do something about it.”
On the call itself: “I’m in the middle of a fight. I just did what I was told. He said, ‘Stand up,’ so I stood up.” He said he had five rounds to work with and was comfortable dropping a round on the ground. “I had nothing to do with the ref standing it up. It’s not my fault.”
Nobody Official Has Said Anything
This part is worth stating plainly. As of Sunday, the UFC has issued no statement on the stand-up, the Nevada State Athletic Commission has said nothing publicly, and Miragliotta has not commented. No investigation has been announced, and no governing body has suggested one.
A stand-up is a judgment call within a referee’s discretion under the unified rules. Disagreeing with it is not the same thing as alleging a violation, and nobody with the authority to allege one has done so.
Moicano did not blame the referee either. “I had a terrible performance. I was well-trained,” he wrote. “I managed to get back control, but I couldn’t do any damage. He was defending well! Congrats to the guy.”
What It Costs
Nolan is 12-1, 6-1 in the UFC, and at 26 has won six straight. He entered ranked 14th at lightweight on a five-fight run, collected a $100,000 Performance of the Night bonus and named Mateusz Gamrot as a target.
Moicano falls to 21-8-1 at 37, his first stoppage loss since Islam Makhachev submitted him in January 2025. He and Farman Hasanov were both taken for precautionary CT scans after the card.
The call was wrong, and Cormier said so on live television. The result stands anyway, and Moicano is the only person involved who has not tried to hang it on someone else.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
