For those of you who watched the Roy Nelson-Andrei Arlovski bout on EliteXC-CBS Saturday Night Fights, you probably saw the referee incident that transpired in the ring; to recap, what basically happened was that Nelson was attempting to apply a kimura to Arlovski while in half-guard, but for whatever reason, the referee of the bout made both fighters stand up, swinging the momentum of the match over to Arlovski – who would subsequesntly beat Nelson on a TKO.  MMANews.com conducted an interview with Nelson; Nelson talked about the fight and his thoughts on what he thought happened in the ring.  Below are some excerpts from the interview:

Chris Howie for MMANews.com: What were your thoughts on the fight and how things did or didn’t work out for you?

Roy Nelson: Alright I guess. [laughs]

MMANews.com: Let’s go back to the first round of the fight, you are working a kimura and while clearly in the dominate position the referee stands you and Arlovski up, what were you thinking at that time?

Roy Nelson: It was the first fight I’ve ever had where I was in a dominate position, working for a kimura, and in side control…then the ref did what he did and it is what it is and I can’t really change it. To me, I was in a good position, I could pass the guard and I was working all the moves to a submission that I wanted to. Then the ref took it out of my hands. It was like being in the playoffs and the ref is calling bad fouls (basketball) or they call something stupid like a fair catch (football). When the ref is doing things like that it is basically like you are not fighting one person in the ring, but two. It will never happen again but it was one of those things that really screwed with my head but that is not to take anything away from Andrei.

MMANews.com: Did it kill the momentum you were building?

Roy Nelson: I’d say so. It went from fighting one person to two.

MMANews.com: Do you feel there is a lot of inconsistency when it comes to calls like that?

Roy Nelson: Usually the refs are good but that is the first time I’ve met that ref (Jorge Ortiz). I think Troy (Waugh) would have been a better ref to have than the one I had (Ortiz). He is more of a veteran when it comes to fights like that. When it comes to the ref they need to know what the styles are and they should at least know what a kimura lock is. Everyone knows what an armbar is and if I had have been on the bottom and was working on that they wouldn’t have broken it up and they wouldn’t if I had of had a rear naked choke.

MMANews.com: Have you had a chance to watch the fight since Saturday?

Roy Nelson: Dude, I’ve watched that fight like twenty times.

MMANews.com: You can hear Ortiz telling the two of you that you need to improve your position but you can also see that you are working on that kimura by throwing knees to the body and waiting for the right time to really tweak the arm, did you feel he was talking to you or to Arlovski?

Roy Nelson: He was like “you gotta move, you gotta move”, it was like he didn’t give a crap about what was going on. I would have assumed that he was talking to Andrei but I guess it was me.

For the rest of this interview, click here.