On Wednesday, the Nevada Athletic Commission approved the recommendations of executive director Bob Bennett to assign Herb Dean as the referee for the main event of this Saturday’s UFC 264 event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the highly anticipated trilogy fight between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor.
In addition, the three judges at cage side have also been approved. Derek Cleary, Sal D’Amato and Junichiro Kumijo will be scoring the five-round lightweight matchup.
Poirier (MMA Fighting’s No. 1 ranked lightweight) will look to put a stamp on his rivalry with McGregor after stopping the former two-division champion in the second round at UFC 257 in January. “The Diamond” has only tasted defeat once over his last nine appearances, a third-round submission loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov in a title unification bout at UFC 242 in September 2019. The 32-year-old also holds victories over the likes of Dan Hooker, Max Holloway, Justin Gaethje and Anthony Pettis during his current streak.
McGregor (MMA Fighting’s No. 11 ranked lightweight) was victorious in their first meeting at UFC 178 in September 2014 via first-round TKO. After taking a massive pay day to box Floyd Mayweather in August 2017, “The Notorious” had gone 1-2 in his three octagon appearances, which includes a submission loss to Nurmagomedov at UFC 229, and a 40-second TKO win over Donald Cerrone at UFC 246.