Renato Moicano was winning that fight, and then a referee decided he wasn't. Dan Miragliotta stood the fighters up while Moicano sat on Tom Nolan's back with a body triangle locked, landing punches and hunting a choke. From that moment, the main event of UFC Fight Night 292 belonged to someone else.
Here's what happened at the Meta APEX on Saturday. Moicano held back position with the body triangle locked for roughly two and a half minutes, throwing shots to open up the finish. That's a fighter actively working to end it. Miragliotta broke it up anyway, Nolan got off the floor, and the fight he'd been losing suddenly reset. He scored a knockdown as the second round closed, dropped Moicano again late in the third, and finished by TKO at 1:28 of the round. The 37-year-old Brazilian took his first stoppage loss since he stepped in on short notice to challenge Islam Makhachev at UFC 311 in January 2025, and his first knockout loss since Rafael Fiziev back in December 2020.
The rule referees reach for to justify a stand-up is the timidity clause in the Unified Rules: "The Referee shall either stand up or break the fighters when neither fighter is able to or fails to demonstrate real, significant and/or sustained effort to advance towards finishing the fight by any method." Picture Moicano punching a trapped opponent while squeezing for a choke as you read that. Real effort, significant effort, sustained effort: he was doing all three. There's no reading of that rule that produces a stand-up. Miragliotta overrode it.
Moicano looked gassed and might have lost the third round regardless. Maybe. But you don't get to hand Nolan a knockdown at the end of round two, change the entire rhythm of the fight, and then shrug that the result would've been the same anyway. The version of this fight where Moicano keeps grinding on the back and makes Nolan survive two and a half more minutes doesn't exist anymore, because a referee deleted it. Nolan did everything right. He got up, swung, and finished it. The win is his and the TKO is legitimate. The man who manufactured the opportunity is the problem.
Miragliotta has a history here. In the Struve-Rothwell fight at UFC on ESPN 7 in December 2019, he told an injured Stefan Struve he was ahead on the scorecards and nudged him to keep going. Struve was finished shortly after. Forbes wrote at the time: "A referee should never mention or reiterate anyone's take on a scorecard to a fighter." This is the same referee who broke up Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington mid-embrace at UFC 268 with "You can kiss later." He likes being in the fight. The cage isn't supposed to have a fourth participant.
It's unclear whether Moicano or his team will push for a review, and appeals like this rarely go anywhere in Nevada. A referee can reach into a fight and flip the outcome, and the sport's machinery just shrugs. If there's no review and no admission of a blunder, the people running MMA's officiating are choosing to protect one of their own over the fighters who earn the position. Moicano did the hard part. Miragliotta undid it. Somebody with a clipboard and a title should have to say so out loud.
