MMA needs to evolve mindset on stopping fights

A fight can be stopped by the referee, by the corner, by the cageside doctor if directed by the ref, and of course by the fighter.

The criteria by which each party will stop a fight are different.

Fighters are trained for years in gameness – the will to win greater than the will to live – and thus a seasoned fighter only very, very rarely quits.

The referee is directed to stop a fight if an athlete is not showing intelligent defense in the face of an attack, or if the fighter is otherwise in danger of sustaining a serious injury.

The doctor can advise the referee as to whether the figher cannot continue the match safely. However, mixed martial arts is a hurting game, so the concept of safely is a complex one. In practice, if a fighter appears able to continue without a strong likelihood of serious injury, the doctor will let the fight go on.

The corner’s job is often to convince a fighter full of human doubt to continue, and in fact to go harder still. Thus, corners are not the ideal candidates to stop a fight.

Greg Jackson is aguably the best corner in MMA; in an interview with MMAJunkie, he explained.

“There’s no golden rule,” said Jackson. “You can’t say in every instance where your fighter is taking a beating it should be stopped, because fights do turn around sometimes. I am reluctant to throw towels in just for that very reason. If it’s that bad of a beating, I think that’s the referee’s job.”

John McCarthy is arguably the best referee in MMA, and in the same piece by Ben Fowlkes, he, too, explained.

“It all comes down to you having compassion for the fighter and enough backbone to stand up to the people who will say you screwed the fighter,” said McCarthy. “… No one deserves the right to finish a fight. They earn it through their actions in being competitive. A ref needs to understand the difference between fighting and surviving. Sometimes we need to protect fighters from themselves as much as their opponent.”

Everyone agrees that if a fighter is about to sustain a serious injury, the fight should be stopped.

Fans were furious with Herb Dean when Tim Sylvia clearly wanted to keep fighting Frank Mir at UFC 48. Then fans saw the instant replay in which Sylvia’s forearm visibly broke in the middle. Sylvia wanted to keep fighting, and fellow former UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture once broke his arm and went on to beat Gabriel Gonzaga, so maybe The Mainiac could have gone on and even prevailed. But Sylvia would have been in danger of immediate injury, and thus the fight was rightly stopped.

The problem comes when a fighter is not suffering head trauma to the extent that he is going to face immediately injury, but is suffering head trauma that can lead to pugilistic dementia/chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The truth is, woefully little is known about CTE. Is it big headshots in training that leads to CTE? Is it countless minor dings? Can a single, long, brutal fight casue it? Is it a matter of how many years it goes on for? We don’t definitively have those answers.

Rosi Sexton, whose losing battle with Jessica Andrade at UFN 30 generated complaints that the ref should have stopped it, was asked by Fowlkes at what point do we cross the line from acceptable risk to reckless disregard for the health and safety of the very people who drive the sport?

“That’s a very difficult question,” said Sexton. “I’m not sure I’ve got an answer to that.” Sexton is arguably the smartest person in MMA, and if she has a hard time defining it, then we all do.

But that doesn’t mean you do nothing. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Potter Stewart offers some guidance from the grave, when he defined when erotic material become ‘hard core’ pornography.

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description,” said Stewart of what ‘hard core’ means. “And perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

People who have been in the fight game for a while know a fight that is going to shorten a fighter’s career when they see it.

We need a universal understanding in MMA, by the fighters, by the referees, by the doctors, by the promoters, by every ass in every seat, that CTE is a problem in contact sports, and that the danger is far worse than blindness. CTE is a slow blinding of the mind and soul, and it takes years to show. Therefore, in a fight, it can happen that the fighter is too tough for his own good, and for his long term health, the fight will be stopped.

There is no suggestion that the fighter could not have continued. The fighter could have continued and could the fight play out several times, would likely win one. Put that Ninja Choke on Cain Velasquez a few more times, and JDS would likely have caught on. But there are more important things than winning a fight, and a reasonably functioning human brain is one of them.

As human beings, we are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. You cannot sell yourself into slavery, as you do not own yourself. You are too valuable to be owned. Not all life is a market – you cannot sell your organs. Any society in which the rich could buy limbs from the thereafter crawling poor, would have lost its humanity. Going forward, the standard by which a fight is ended has to gently shift. No longer is it enough if a fighter can fight on, with his hands up.

At a hard to define point, the amount of head trauma becomes too much, and fights should be stopped, sometimes earlier than they are now.

In order to work, there has to be a new understanding in mixed martial arts, and turn from rights to responsibility. At present, fighters have a right to step into the cage and, as long as their hands are up, they can lose every minute of every round, hoping for a win in that tiny window when the other fighter makes a mistake. This ethos needs to be balanced with a responsibility. Fighters have a responsibility to be competitive in a sporting event when a central aspect of offense is head trauma. If a fighter is not competitive, and is receiving endless head trauma, then that fighter is not fulfilling their responsibility to themselves, to the fans, and to the sport, and the fight can be stopped.

This means necessarily that we will lose some thrilling come from behind wins. However, what we can gain is no Gerald McClellan. And that is a winning formula.

It might behoove anyone disagreeing to consider Gerald McClellan, Ring’s 27th best puncher of all time. Following a fight with Nigel Benn in 1995 that was almost stopped several times, McClellan is blind, largely deaf, hobbled physically, hobbled mentally, cared for by his sisters in a modest home, with few visitors.

Combat sports at their best offer extraordinary example of some of humankind’s greatest attributes, including resilience, bravery, and strength. And the day to day practice of fighting imparts discipline, confidence, direction, and much more. But there can be too much of a good thing.

Life is a balance. A life entirely without risk is scarcly worth living. But at some point, a fight gets too risky, is no longer worth it, and should be stopped. The sport needs to nudge that point a little more towards safety than it is right now.

Because we’re worth it.