User blog comment:Zolnir/Flaw in Tournament Setup/@comment-24993958-20160317093800

Well no offence but irl, the boxing matches are seen are refereed by a skinny dude that by all accounts will fall on his ass if one of the competitors accidentally decks him…so I can’t say they are all that useful here.

As for in universe, RWBY wouldn’t be the first tournament arc to not feature on screen referees, and there are even shows like Naruto were the referee magically appears and disappears after announcing the beginning of the fight, so it sort of slipped our minds…not that this detracts from your point by any means, but since RWBY was so focused on borrowing eastern cliché’s they were bound to pick up some that didn’t make sense.