Marc Goddard Reveals Why He Will Never Officiate a Leon Edwards Fight

Referee Marc Goddard doesn’t want the slightest personal involvement with fighters whose bouts he officiates.

While refereeing is one of the toughest parts of all sports, combat sports referees arguably have a heavier burden on their shoulders due to the lethal nature of the sport. Hence, to avoid any conflict of interest, referees at the highest level are not allowed to coach fighters.

This has also stopped Goddard from refereeing the fights of UFC welterweight champion Leon Edwards . The Scottish referee hasn’t been seriously involved in coaching for a while now other than a weekly class at his friend’s gym. However, Goddard revealed that he was Edwards’ first MMA coach back when “Rocky” was just an amateur. To avoid risking allegations of favoritism as well the predicament of having to take a call against his former pupil, Goddard deliberately avoids all of Edwards’ fights and will continue to do so.

“You never saw me ref Leon Edwards in the UFC and you never will,” Goddard said on the OverDogs podcast with Mike Perry . “Why? Because I was Leon Edwards ’ first coach, MMA. Way, way, way back when he was just an amateur… Who knew then when Leon first walked into that gym as a raw amateur, a raw novice with no experience. Now look at him, UFC welterweight champion of the world. But you never saw me referee him and you never will. Because we’ll just keep it out of the way. I just don’t want any hassle. And I don’t want to be put in a predicament where I’m making a call that could go against him. So, it’s both ways.”

Another instance when Goddard deliberately avoided officiating a fight was Israel Adesanya ’s title rematch against Alex Pereira . Goddard was the third man inside the Octagon when “The Last Stylebender” lost his middleweight title to Pereira in their first outing at UFC 281 in November 2022. However, Goddard asked not to be assigned their rematch at UFC 287 the next year, as he didn’t want Adesanya to have negative flashbacks from the first loss.

“Do you remember when Israel Adesanya fought Pereira for the second time in Miami? I specifically requested not to do that fight,” Goddard said. “Because obviously I had done the first. And the reason I requested not to do that fight was cause I was thinking about Izzy… I actually removed myself because what I didn’t want to do was – I was thinking of a fighter then, this is his night, it’s all about him and I didn’t want to walk into that dressing room and him to have any form of negative connotation or something like that. So, I just thought the right thing to do and the fairest thing to do by him is just stay out of the fight, give it to another ref. And I requested from the commission not to do it.”