It seems like that more than any other sport, the fight game is rife with shady characters, controversy, and corruption. The most recent example of course being Antonio Margarito getting caught putting heavy plaster in his hand wraps before a fight - horrifying, but hardly anything new. Check out this video of the infamous Billy Colins Jr v. Luis Resto fight, where Resto got caught not only loading his hands with plaster, but removing padding from his gloves.
(Forward to 23-seconds into the video to see Resto get caught)
Colins endured such a beating he was forced to retire. He died a few months later in a car accident, which his family suspects was a suicide.
Of course, MMA is not immune to such controversy. Not even women's MMA.
Last week, MMA's second biggest star, Cristiane Santos was set to fight Japanese submission specialist Hitomi Akano. Right off the bat, the fight was fishy. The fight was set to take place at 145 pounds. Akano, usually fights undersized at 135 pounds, her natural weight class being 125.
Already undersized, Santos shocked everyone in attendance when she weighed in at 152 pounds! SEVEN pounds over the weight limit. For those of you who don't know, missing weight by two pounds is considered a huge miss.
Santos was given until 8 that night to cut two pounds and weigh in at 149.5 pounds, the maximum weight allowed for the fight to occur since Akano weighed in at 143.5. (Anymore than a six pound differential, the commission would not have allowed the fight to occur.)
Later that night in Santos' hotel room Santos, dressed only in a bikini, weighed in at 150.1 pounds. She asked Hitomi's camp to leave for a moment so Santos could step on the scales without the bikini, and somehow weighed in at a miraculous 144 pounds! Santos claimed that her wet bikini somehow caused her to weigh six pounds heavier.
The California State Athletic Commissioner of course checked the scale, and unsurprisingly found it to be tampered with.
The fight went down anyway. (Hitomi accepted a $20 000 bonus/bribe + 20% of Santos' purse in exchange for her consent). Santos, weighed 158 pounds at fight time (outweighing her opponent by nearly 20 pounds) eventually won via 3rd round stoppage.
Despite her hollow/tainted victory, she celebrated like she just won the Superbowl. Even more upsetting, Santos refused to apologize or take any responsibility for what happened, and instead blamed the whole thing on her period. Seriously.
The end game in all of this is that Gina Carano versus Santos, the only viable, money-making women's fight out there, is now ready to go.
vs 
(Lets just say that this is a mismatch in at least one way.)
While no one likes cheating/shadiness in any sport, it seems especially nefarious when you're dealing with combat sports, where people's lives are literally at stake. Until athletic commissions step-up, and prevent nonsense like this from happening, people will continue to look at boxing and MMA as barbaric... and they'll have a bit of a point.
Speaking of nonsense, I leave you with the video clip below. The fight is occurring in Mississippi. Why? No state with an athletic commission would sanction it. It's nice to know the world hasn't gone completely insane. (P.S. the ‘boxing' match between the two is going to take place in an MMA cage.)
