While watching Donald Cowboy Cerrone and Jamie Varner attempt to work out their bad blood in the cage during WEC 51, I couldn’t help but think Cerrone’s actions before, throughout and after the fight were aimed at helping him secure notoriety and future consideration for fights.

So my question is; was Cerrone displaying bad sportsmanship or is he simply doing what many before him have done and that’s selling a fight and securing fans (and for that matter promoters interest) in his future bouts?

As the fight came to a close and it seemed the two fighters would agree to disagree and give a respectful touch of the gloves, there was a final forearm shove from Cerrone. Moments later Cerrone calls out to Varner offering him a rematch in Varner’s hometown of Arizona. Despite it being a standardrubber match that might very well have came about on it’s own, I’m sure if Cerrone didn’t keep the bad blood boiling this rematch up would have been on the back burner for a while due to the fact that out side of an explosive first round it was easily Cerrone’s fight to win.

The next two rounds didn’t exactly live up to the ‘fight of the year’ pre-fight hype.

So, this got me to thinking what kind of other Bad Sportsmanship can be viewed as possibly productive for the sport and what is constitutes just plain poor personal conduct?

In the last few years alone we’ve seen fighters hold submissions after the stoppage, strike opponents after the bell or after a stoppage, we have seen fighters accuse one another of using PED’s or other illegal methods of gaining an advantage ( i.e. Grease Gate), fighters actually testing positive for banned substances, intentional illegal blows, post fight brawls, post fight rants against promotion sponsors, post fight excuses for a loss, death threats, illegal activities in fighters personal lives, controversial sponsors and or tattoos… and the list goes on and on.

Some of this conduct is just par for the course and some incidents are very serious offenses and reflect poorly on the sport and the business of MMA. The question then becomes, how much is too much?

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