Contributor: Josh Hall
“THROW THE DAMN TOWEL!!!” – Duke, Rocky IV
As a child of the 1980s, I grew up on the Rocky movies. I loved them all, but especially the fourth installment of the series where the American “hero” (Rocky Balboa) defeated the “evil” Soviet boxer (Ivan Drago) that had killed his former foe turned best friend Apollo Creed. I use the quotation marks because as an adult that loves combat sports I am fully aware that while the movie tries hard to sell Rocky as the man avenging his friend, the truth is that Rocky’s actions (or lack thereof) were the main cause in his death.
Rocky corners Creed and watches on as he gets mauled during a first round he barely survives. In his corner he cannot speak coherently in between rounds, only able to mumble in response to Rocky, telling him not to throw in the towel no matter what. At this point, the only reasonable thing for his cornerman and friend to do is save him from himself. That is always the most important role of the corner in any combat sport. Rocky instead does nothing and agrees to abide with Creed’s wishes. Even when Creed’s longtime trainer and #2 in the corner begs Rocky to throw in the towel, he still does nothing. When Creed dies, the person to blame isn’t his opponent, regardless of what the movie says. It is on his corner for sending him into the ring knowing full well he was too hurt to continue.
While a 29 year-old boxing movie may not seem to be the most relevant tie-in to MMA, that particular scene is one that I fear we will see in the UFC cage (or Bellator/WSOF, etc…) sooner rather than later if changes are not made. It seems that every few events the issue of fighter safety becomes increasingly relevant, and UFC 173 gave us multiple reminders that we still have a way to go in that department.
The main event between UFC Bantamweight champion Renan Barao and challenger TJ Dillashaw was arguably the most shocking result in a title fight in the history of the organization. Dillashaw was on the champion from the opening bell, hurting him badly in a first round that Barao narrowly survived. While he did survive, he did not recover. Dillashaw beat a dazed Barao from pillar to post for almost five full rounds before finally knocking him out in the last round.
As a fan, the last few rounds were kind of hard to watch for me. Barao looked like he was moving in molasses, and it was fairly obvious that he was functioning on auto-pilot. His body was trying, but his brain was never ever able to recover enough for him to be competitive in the cage. For the last two rounds the friends I was watching with were all begging for the fight to be stopped, but that clearly wasn’t happening until Dillashaw put him away. It seemed hard to believe that his corner couldn’t see how badly he was hurt, and after the fight his manager/trainer Andre Pederneiras spoke about their interactions with him after the first round.
“After the first knockdown, Renan couldn’t get into the fight anymore and he went dizzy with every blow,” he said. “Even between the rounds, when we were talking to him, he wasn’t even looking at us.”
If MMA and the UFC are truly serious about fighter safety, statements like this are a serious problem. When a fighter is so hurt that every blow makes him dizzy and he is nonresponsive in between rounds, he has suffered pretty serious head trauma. I don’t have a medical background, so I will defer to this excellent piece by an actual doctor for what is exactly going on in the body when brain injury occurs.
“Chronic neurologic impairment has long been recognized as a sequelae of boxing. (CTE—much in the news in recent years due to its association with football—was once known as punch drunkenness, or dementia pugilistica.) This is unsurprising when we learn that being hit by a professional boxer is like being struck by a 13-pound bowling ball swung at 20 mph. After a series of blows to the head, a fighter will often appear glassy-eyed, with observers saying, ‘The lights are on, but nobody’s home.’ Generally, the fighter looks this way because he has just sustained a cerebral concussion, which is marked by a sudden impairment of consciousness, paralysis of certain reflexes, and loss of memory.”
Impairment of consciousness? Check. Paralysis of certain reflexes? Check again. Maybe Barao wasn’t so hurt that he was suffering memory loss. Let’s go back to Andre Pederneiras for the answer to that…
“After the first round, we told him not to trade with (Dillashaw) so he could recover, but it was like we had told him ‘go there and trade punches with him’ because that’s exactly what he did. He kept fighting and asked us who was winning the fight before the fifth. When the fight was over, he asked us what happened, if he won or if he lost.”
Renan Barao had limited cognitive function, could not follow his corner’s instructions at all, was getting hurt by every blow landed and literally had no idea what was going on in the fight. And yet his corner never considered stopping the fight, with Pederneiras instead using all of that information after the fight to argue for an immediate rematch in Brazil. Fighter safety doesn’t even seem to be an afterthought here, instead just being disregarded completely.
Barao may not suffer long term damage as a result of this, and hopefully this is much ado about nothing. Even if that is the case, the kind of indifference shown by his corner should not be condoned or excused. Allowing a fighter to continue when he is that severely hurt is putting his life in jeopardy. It is that serious, and if we do not pay attention to these red flags then MMA will suffer the same fate as boxing in that regard. There are many gray areas in regards to how hurt is too hurt, but this doesn’t fall into one of those. If Barao’s corner is unaware of the danger they were putting him in, that is genuinely terrifying. If they were aware, that isn’t better.
Last October a fighter training at Nova Uniao died while cutting weight for a fight scheduled for Pederneiras’s Shooto Brazil promotion. Leandro “Feijao” Souza was tapped on a week’s notice as a replacement for a flyweight fight, which involved a 33 pound weight cut, or 21.15% of his total body weight. In his cut Souza passed out in a sauna and never regained consciousness. He was found to be taking high doses of Lasix, a banned diuretic that is extremely dangerous and normally administered under hospital supervision. These are cutting techniques that have been medically established to be dangerous to the point where they were banned from NCAA wrestling after an epidemic of deaths.
Fighter safety is not something that MMA can take lightly. That can only end in tragedy. Fighters have already died on smaller cards, and MMA is only one death in a big, televised fight away from the human cockfighting argument rearing its ugly head ahead. That would be terrible for the sport, but still nothing compared to the loss of human life. Both can be prevented, or at the least minimized, if corners will make a serious effort to prioritize the safety of their fighter over everything else.
I know it cannot be an easy thing to throw in the towel on your fighter, but I can’t personally speak to how difficult it is. I have never been in that situation. No one wants to take away the chance for victory from someone they care about, but a good corner knows when enough is enough. I will leave you with this, from a great article on the perspective of a cornerman having to make that tough call.
“A minute into the third, a left-right combination landed square. You could see the silver beads of perspiration fly, as my fighter fell back and his knee hit the canvas. After an eight-count, my man was back in the fray, bravely punching away, but getting drubbed with big punches down the middle.
Suddenly, amid the din, my grizzled cutman whispered, ‘Throw in the towel, this kid is too strong and he is too tired.’
And after the towel was thrown in and the fight was stopped:
A few minutes later down in the locker room, we were alone and I was holding ice packs on both my boxer’s eyes. There was a long uncomfortable silence and then I said in a hush, ‘I love you man, you’re family. I couldn’t let you get hurt.’ There was a moment of silence, and then choking back tears he burbled, ‘entiendo, entiendo,
I know…I know.’”
-Josh can be reached at [email protected] or @jhall282.
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