A very strange story is developing surrounding veteran referee Yves Lavigne. As quoted in the Wrestling Observer, Lavigne told Journal de Montreal that “St. Pierre will eat him up. Koscheck will surely try to hit him with a huge right like (Matt) Serra did, but when he won’t be able to do so, he will get hit and St. Pierre will take him down”. A referee making such a public comment on a fighter is unprecedented in the UFC with the nearest parallel being John McCarthy becoming a commentator at the Fight Network, something that led to him not refereeing in the UFC for over two years.
Lavigne went further than simply predicting Koscheck would lose, saying that “In his last fight at the Bell Centre, Koscheck was afraid to get hit and all he’s done was to keep Paul Daley on the ground” a bizarre criticism given that Paul Daley’s one route to success was his devastating KO power. For good measure Lavigne closed by saying that he was “surprised” that Koscheck was fighting in Montreal after his post-fight comments and that in any case it didn’t matter because George St. Pierre would sell out the Bell Centre irrespective of his opponent.
Understandably it didn’t take long for Josh Koscheck to respond calling on the UFC and the various commissions to ensure that Lavigne never referees again. His full comments are as follows:
“UFC referee, Yves Lavigne is clearly not suited to be a referee after his rant of personal attacks and opinions on me as a fighter. It’s supposed to be his job to look at a fight unbiased, but how can anyone trust this guy to fairly referee any fight ever again after his comments? It’s scary to think this guy has been calling fights in the octagon for this long. It’s very fair to say Mr. Lavigne will never ref one of my fights again. I would never put all my hard work as a fighter or my livelihood in the hands of this ref.
The (UFC) and the commission would be irresponsible to let him continue his job- any call this guy makes would have to be questioned. You call MMA a professional sport? Well, professional starts at the top. Never would an NFL, NBA or other major sports official state there personal opinions publicly about a player and keep their job. I now question every call Yves has ever made as a referee. Hopefully no fighter ever has to step into a fight with Yves Lavigne as referee. Better get that resume ready Lavigne…..”.
Update: As metricjulie pointed out the comments, it looks increasingly likely that Yves Lavigne never made the original comments and that a journalist for Journal de Montreal fabricated them.
