Being a UFC referee is a hard and often thankless job. The best try to remain invisible while keeping the fights they oversee from devolving into lawless chaos. And while NSAC referee Mark Smith didn’t always succeed, he managed to keep things under wraps when he injured his knee at UFC 324.
During the broadcast, an eagle-eyed fan in the T-Mobile Arena crowd captured footage of Smith being carried backstage. This was immediately after he had refereed the duel between Ateba Gautier and Andrey Pulyaev, and there was some concern that the guy had suffered a heart attack or something.
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Fortunately that wasn’t the case, according to UFC CEO Dana White… although the truth could prevent Smith from working another event for several months.
“No one has asked me if the referee tore his ACL during the fight,” White said at the UFC 324 post-fight press conference. “ACL (injury). (Bruce) Buffer is the only one I’ve seen hurt his ACL who wasn’t fighting. He tore his ACL, I don’t know what time it was, but they had to take him out of there.”
Based on footage unearthed by X user WhiteBeltCentral, it appears that Smith’s knee gave out at the end of the fight between Gautier and Pulyaev. The video at the end shows Smith stumbling as he ran to get between the fighters at the final horn, and then limping away with a worried expression on his face. He would stay to raise Gautier’s hand in victory before his fellow officers led him away.
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ACL injuries are a nightmare to heal and often take six to nine months depending on their severity. This could keep Mark Smith out of the cage for half of 2026, unless further investigation shows that he only suffered a strain and not a tear. That may be fine for fighters like Maycee Barber or trainer Eric Nicksick, but we wish a quick and full recovery for Smith, and hopefully he gets some decent workplace injury benefits to boot.