UFC Fight Night 62 results: Ref gives Leandro Silva gift submission win vs. Drew Dober

RIO DE JANEIRO – Drew Dober seemed well on his way to escaping Leandro Silva’s guillotine choke midway through the second round.

Then, in a bizarre move, referee Eduardo Herdy stepped in to stop the fight for no apparent reason, giving Silva (18-2-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC) a controversial win and enraging Dober (15-7 MMA, 1-3 UFC) along with the crowd, almost all of whom seemed to recognize it for the colossal blunder that it was.

The lightweight bout was part of the preliminary card of today’s UFC Fight Night 62 event at Maracanazinho Gymnasium in Rio de Janeiro. It aired on FOX Sports 2 following additional prelims on UFC Fight Pass and ahead of a main card on FOX Sports 1.

The fight had been a competitive and evenly contested one through the first round, which saw Dober pressing forward and Silva looking to evade his attacks with his back to the fence. Early in the second, Silva completed a takedown and quickly moved to side control before eventually trying for the guillotine when Dober initiated a scramble to escape.

At first the choke seemed promising, but Dober made all the right moves to effect an escape, getting off to the proper side in half-guard and working to pry the choking arm loose in a patient, clear-headed defense.

As Dober went to post with his left arm, however, Hurdy grabbed his forearm as if concerned that he might have lost consciousness. After a brief verbal exchange with Silva, Hurdy waved the fight off, despite there being no evident tap and no reason whatsoever to halt the action. Still, once Hurdy had made that decision, it was one he couldn’t unmake. It left Silva to celebrate amid the sound of boos while Dober protested the stoppage at 2:45 of Round 2.

“For me, he blacked out,” Silva said. “A win is a win, and that is what I was looking for. I want to show to the UFC that I can be one of the best in my division, and I will prove it inside the octagon.”

For his part, Dober was adamant that he had never tapped, nor did he have any reason to.

“You train. You put your heart, your soul … you bleed, you cry, and the referee stops the fight for no reason,” Dober said. “He said (backstage) that I needed to tap three times, and I did not tap once.”

The win, controversial though it was, makes it two straight victories for Silva. Dober has now lost three of his last four.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 62 results include:

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 62, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s John Morgan contributed to this report on site in Rio.)