Mixed Martial Arts

[jmdirt]

Cormier and Miocic are going to get it on for the heavyweight title at UFC 226!

 

[jmdirt]

Some good leather swapping on Fox FREE TV tonight.

10 point system is silly...have you ever seen a 10-5 round?

I would like to see more of points system like wrestling (ie: a take down is worth 2), plus punch total is worth points, kick total is worth points.... etc. It will take (some of) the judges 'opinion' out of it, plus IMO make for better fights. In some ways its better if the fighters don't let it go to the judges, but by the same token a great brawl that goes the distance is great.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

The lowest they can go is 10-8, only recently changed from 10-9. All forms of professional fighting are heavily influenced by the gaming industry, and I think the odds-makers want to keep fights close even though one fighter is clearly superior because it benefits the gambling business.

This is my obviously too-long-winded explanation of how the UFC got to a 10-point scoring system to begin with.

First they got in Dutch with "the authorities" from the start because the UFC billed itself as "no rules" fighting. Which wasn't entirely true (though not far from it), but thanks in no small part to American Senator John McCain's use of his bully pulpit, 36 of the American states passed laws banning "ho-holds-barred" fighting.

The first few UFCs didn't have weight classes or rounds or judges. Or a prescribed dress. Shoes or barefooted, gloves or no, gi or no, all up to the individual fighter. The fight didn't end until one fighter tapped or was knocked unconscious. The rules didn't even allow a TKO, but they did allow head-butting, hair pulling, groin strikes, fish-hooking, small joint locks and elbows to the top of the head.

To get their legality (and their livelihood) restored, the UFC had no choice but cozy up to the athletic commissions in all of those 36 states. Which led not just to a considerable softening of the rules of the contest but also to adoption of the 10-point scoring system. In part that was because some of the states wouldn't allow a contest in their jurisdiction without their own judges were used (you might have noticed that the state of New York conspicuously requires the referee at UFC events to wear a NY athletic commission shirt), and those judges would have been schooled in the 10-point system.

Any system for scoring a fight necessarily is going to involve an element of subjectivity. Even scoring a single blow requires multiple layers of subjectivity because there are only two types of blow that can be scored completely objectively: a wiff that altogether misses and has absolutely zero effect, or a strike that renders the opponent immediately unconscious, a KTFO. In every instance, the former is a zero and the latter is a maximum score. However, everything else would have to be scored on the basis of where did it land, how hard did it land, and what effect did it produce. Only one of those three considerations can be weighed completely objectively but even that one would require some subjectivity in assigning the score value per blow because somebody somewhere would have to address the question of how many points a kick to the calf is worth versus an elbow to the jaw or a punch to the abdomen.

Too complicated, I think. Best to only require each judge to distill his assessment of each fighter's performance in each round to a single number.

On the subject of the impact of the states' athletic commissions on the competition, you might have noticed that Big John McCarthy was absent from the UFC for a while, and then only showed up occasionally. Big John's stature in the UFC cannot be overestimated because he was the only referee for all the fights in the first UFCs. And it was only at his insistence that they implemented the first change to the fight rules. He insisted on being able to stop the fight whenever one fighter lost the ability to intelligently defend himself. In effect, a TKO. And he set the standard for decorum and performance for all the other referees. He's as much a bedrock feature of the UFC as the steel fence is. Anyway, in 2007 Big John left his gig at the UFC to become a commentator on a start-up MMA telly station. When that station failed, the UFC graciously gave him his old job back.

However, in the interim, his license to referee combat sports in the state of Nevada lapsed. When he returned to the UFC, which stages a majority of its events in Las Vegas, Nevada refused to reissue a license to him. They said, in essence, we don't need you, we have enough referees. So for a while after he returned, he only could referee UFC events that weren't in Nevada. Which explains why he was absent for a spell, and then uncommonly scarce for a while longer.

After all that he had been to the sport, can you imagine the hubris of denying Big John a license to referee because you already had plenty? Along with Herb Dean and Jacob "Stitch" Duran, he's as much as a rock star. I am quite sure he could make a comfortable living entirely off his celebrity, were he a mind to. And probably without having to resort to accidentally leaking a pr0n video of himself having sex with someone named Kardashian.

I didn't get turned on to the UFC until the number of their events was up into the 60s, and as my interest grew I decided I needed to go back and watch those early events for myself. So I got ripped digital copies of the first 40. I tried to binge watch when I could because I found that compressing time that way gave me a heightened sense of just how the the sport was evolving in response to a frequently-changing rules structure. Besides, digital video let me skip all the dead parts, and the majority of the events only had 30-45 minutes of action anyway, so I could watch half a dozen UFCs in roughly the same timespan as two films.

I started out thinking that one of the founding principles of the UFC was that the fighting should be as near real-world as possible, a "run what you brung" fight, regardless whether what you brung was karate or boxing or drunken monkey kung fu. And there's no "rounds" in a real fight, so why should the fighters get breaks in the UFC?

Then I got to UFC 5. The championship match was Ken Shamrock vs Royce Gracie. At UFC 5 there still were no rounds and no time limits but they stopped the fight after 36 minutes and called it a draw because the only people in the audience who hadn't already walked out were the ones who had fallen asleep. Gracie and Shamrock both were submission artists, and equally skilled at submission defence, and after more than half an hour neither one had enough petrol left in the tank to out-submit the other.**

That wasn't the only time in those early UFCs that the fight lost most (or all) of its entertainment value because both fighters were gassed, but it certainly was the one that drove a stake through the heart of not having rounds and not having a scoring system to decide the victor if neither could finish the other. But I count both those changes good ones, in large part on account of that fight.

So the UFC kissed the pope's ring and adopted the 10-point scoring system. To quote Winston Churchill, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." That's how I view the 10-point system. It sucks, but it sucks less than all the others. Certainly less, IMHO, than not scoring the fight at all but insisting that one finish the other.


**Gracie and Shamrock faced off again in 2016 at Bellator 149. It was the only win by striking in Gracie's long and distinguished career, but that fight was the poster child for mandatory redundancy for aging mixed martial artists. It was painful to watch. On top of that, Shamrock tested positive after for steroids and methadone.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

The lowest they can go is 10-8, only recently changed from 10-9. All forms of professional fighting are heavily influenced by the gaming industry, and I think the odds-makers want to keep fights close even though one fighter is clearly superior because it benefits the gambling business.

This is my obviously too-long-winded explanation of how the UFC got to a 10-point scoring system to begin with.

First they got in Dutch with "the authorities" from the start because the UFC billed itself as "no rules" fighting. Which wasn't entirely true (though not far from it), but thanks in no small part to American Senator John McCain's use of his bully pulpit, 36 of the American states passed laws banning "ho-holds-barred" fighting.

The first few UFCs didn't have weight classes or rounds or judges. Or a prescribed dress. Shoes or barefooted, gloves or no, gi or no, all up to the individual fighter. The fight didn't end until one fighter tapped or was knocked unconscious. The rules didn't even allow a TKO, but they did allow head-butting, hair pulling, groin strikes, fish-hooking, small joint locks and elbows to the top of the head.

To get their legality (and their livelihood) restored, the UFC had no choice but cozy up to the athletic commissions in all of those 36 states. Which led not just to a considerable softening of the rules of the contest but also to adoption of the 10-point scoring system. In part that was because some of the states wouldn't allow a contest in their jurisdiction without their own judges were used (you might have noticed that the state of New York conspicuously requires the referee at UFC events to wear a NY athletic commission shirt), and those judges would have been schooled in the 10-point system.

Any system for scoring a fight necessarily is going to involve an element of subjectivity. Even scoring a single blow requires multiple layers of subjectivity because there are only two types of blow that can be scored completely objectively: a wiff that altogether misses and has absolutely zero effect, or a strike that renders the opponent immediately unconscious, a KTFO. In every instance, the former is a zero and the latter is a maximum score. However, everything else would have to be scored on the basis of where did it land, how hard did it land, and what effect did it produce. Only one of those three considerations can be weighed completely objectively but even that one would require some subjectivity in assigning the score value per blow because somebody somewhere would have to address the question of how many points a kick to the calf is worth versus an elbow to the jaw or a punch to the abdomen.

Too complicated, I think. Best to only require each judge to distill his assessment of each fighter's performance in each round to a single number.

On the subject of the impact of the states' athletic commissions on the competition, you might have noticed that Big John McCarthy was absent from the UFC for a while, and then only showed up occasionally. Big John's stature in the UFC cannot be overestimated because he was the only referee for all the fights in the first UFCs. And it was only at his insistence that they implemented the first change to the fight rules. He insisted on being able to stop the fight whenever one fighter lost the ability to intelligently defend himself. In effect, a TKO. And he set the standard for decorum and performance for all the other referees. He's as much a bedrock feature of the UFC as the steel fence is. Anyway, in 2007 Big John left his gig at the UFC to become a commentator on a start-up MMA telly station. When that station failed, the UFC graciously gave him his old job back.

However, in the interim, his license to referee combat sports in the state of Nevada lapsed. When he returned to the UFC, which stages a majority of its events in Las Vegas, Nevada refused to reissue a license to him. They said, in essence, we don't need you, we have enough referees. So for a while after he returned, he only could referee UFC events that weren't in Nevada. Which explains why he was absent for a spell, and then uncommonly scarce for a while longer.

After all that he had been to the sport, can you imagine the hubris of denying Big John a license to referee because you already had plenty? Along with Herb Dean and Jacob "Stitch" Duran, he's as much as a rock star. I am quite sure he could make a comfortable living entirely off his celebrity, were he a mind to. And probably without having to resort to accidentally leaking a pr0n video of himself having sex with someone named Kardashian.

I didn't get turned on to the UFC until the number of their events was up into the 60s, and as my interest grew I decided I needed to go back and watch those early events for myself. So I got ripped digital copies of the first 40. I tried to binge watch when I could because I found that compressing time that way gave me a heightened sense of just how the the sport was evolving in response to a frequently-changing rules structure. Besides, digital video let me skip all the dead parts, and the majority of the events only had 30-45 minutes of action anyway, so I could watch half a dozen UFCs in roughly the same timespan as two films.

I started out thinking that one of the founding principles of the UFC was that the fighting should be as near real-world as possible, a "run what you brung" fight, regardless whether what you brung was karate or boxing or drunken monkey kung fu. And there's no "rounds" in a real fight, so why should the fighters get breaks in the UFC?

Then I got to UFC 5. The championship match was Ken Shamrock vs Royce Gracie. At UFC 5 there still were no rounds and no time limits but they stopped the fight after 36 minutes and called it a draw because the only people in the audience who hadn't already walked out were the ones who had fallen asleep. Gracie and Shamrock both were submission artists, and equally skilled at submission defence, and after more than half an hour neither one had enough petrol left in the tank to out-submit the other.**

That wasn't the only time in those early UFCs that the fight lost most (or all) of its entertainment value because both fighters were gassed, but it certainly was the one that drove a stake through the heart of not having rounds and not having a scoring system to decide the victor if neither could finish the other. But I count both those changes good ones, in large part on account of that fight.

So the UFC kissed the pope's ring and adopted the 10-point scoring system. To quote Winston Churchill, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." That's how I view the 10-point system. It sucks, but it sucks less than all the others. Certainly less, IMHO, than not scoring the fight at all but insisting that one finish the other.


**Gracie and Shamrock faced off again in 2016 at Bellator 149. It was the only win by striking in Gracie's long and distinguished career, but that fight was the poster child for mandatory redundancy for aging mixed martial artists. It was painful to watch. On top of that, Shamrock tested positive after for steroids and methadone.

That's my point with that statement, it could be a three point system. My point with the next part is that I would like to see it scored more precisely than just winning/losing the round.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Re:

Anderson Silva, busted AGAIN. This time methyltestosterone and an as yet unnamed diuretic. Ironically, USADA will treat the Spider as a first-time offender because his previous offence (in 2015) was under NSAC's jurisdiction and before UFC signed on with USADA. Since they've already named the substance (with specificity), I presume that means the "B" sample also tested positive (probably tripped by a skewed T/E ratio) and was confirmed by a CIR test.

Yet another Brazilian fighter caught out by USADA (Brazil, IMHO, is to MMA what Spain is to pro cycling).

Cormier and Miocic are going to get it on for the heavyweight title at UFC 226!

Which poses an interesting dilemma for the UFC. Cormier and Velazquez are BFFs and both are adamant they will not fight the other. Cormier as much as has said he will relinquish the belt -- if the should win it -- before he'll fight Cain. The odds are against him defeating Miocic, but far stranger things have happened in MMA. Velazquez at the moment is the #4 ranked heavyweight contender, so Ngannou, 'Reem and Werdum should have precendence.

Cormier and Velazquez refuse to fight because they're like brothers. OTOH, Roy Nelson says his bout with Matt Mitrione at Bellator 194 (16 Feb), will be like fighting his sister. Not exactly the sort of words you would forward to eating.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Anybody else see this past weekend's UFC Fight Night 125? Particularly the Shevchenko - Cachoeira fight? And I use the term "fight" loosely because before Shevchenko ended it by submission in the final minute of the second round, she was ahead in the official punchstat by 230-3.

Dana White is ripping Mario Yamasaki a new one for letting the fight go on for so long -- in fact it sounds as if he'll be dismissed from the UFC -- but I think it would be setting a dangerous precedent to let the referee end the contest simply because he felt pity for one fighter. Cachoeira wasn't exhibiting impaired judgement or diminished motor skills, and she wasn't suffering injuries that were likely to cause permanent maiming or disability, so who has the right to tell her that she can't continue if that's what she wants? Yamasaki as much as said he was obeying her wishes to go out on her shield, and I've got to side with him. He's far from my favourite ref, and if he disappeared from the octagon forever I would not shed a tear, but if there's any blaming to be done, I think it should be laid at the feet of the UFC's matchmakers (Mick Maynard/Sean Shelby) rather than the referee's.

Or might this be a case of veiled sexism? Because the Diaz brothers in particular earn their livings collecting scar tissue. Their only strategy is to beat their opponent fists (and feet) with their face until the opponent wearies of the effort. Then they go for the submission. Which doesn't meet any definition of "intelligent" I am familiar with, yet this is the path they have chosen. So shouldn't sauce for the goose also be sauce for the gander? Or should a professional fighter's sex be weighed in the decision when to end a fight?

But I don't see any sense in blaming the referee for not doing what would have amounted to creating a new rule on the spot when your promotion already has staged more than 300 events without anyone previously having seen the need for any such rule.

 

[jmdirt]

Romero very unprofessional for not making weight!
Rockhold was looking like the man in this class but changed his winning game plan for some reason and paid for it.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

I think Rockhold needs either to move up in weight or find another line of work. I think he's fighting too dehydrated (for his age) and the durability of his chin is suffering from it.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Could it be that Rockhold reads the CN forums? Because he's moving to LHW.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

Could it be that Rockhold reads the CN forums? Because he's moving to LHW.

I think that's a good move.

RE: my walking weight opinion: He says he is 210 so he should only be able to cut to 200.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

The latest rumour is that Dana White is shopping for the next fight for Brock Lesnar. A blogger at The Bloody Elbow suggests DW should book Lesnar -v- Bones Jones at the Tokyo Dome (which is beyond USADA's authority) and stipulate there will be NO drug testing. He's speculating 70,000 live gate plus a million PPVs (but I think the PPVs for such a fight would be much higher).

And Bellator is slowly drifting toward becoming a full-time Celebrity MMA. They've just announced a May contest between Roy "Big Country" Nelson (who was just eliminated from the heavyweight tournament by Matt Mitrione) against Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović. And there's a rumour that won't die that the Ice Man hisself, Chuck Liddell, is interested in one more fight ...somewhere. Liddell and DW are BFFs but I have suspicions that even Dana White isn't mercenary enough to put 48-year-old Chuck back in the ring against any of his current stable of LHWs. So if it happens, my money's on Bellator.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

The latest rumour is that Dana White is shopping for the next fight for Brock Lesnar. A blogger at The Bloody Elbow suggests DW should book Lesnar -v- Bones Jones at the Tokyo Dome (which is beyond USADA's authority) and stipulate there will be NO drug testing. He's speculating 70,000 live gate plus a million PPVs (but I think the PPVs for such a fight would be much higher).

And Bellator is slowly drifting toward becoming a full-time Celebrity MMA. They've just announced a May contest between Roy "Big Country" Nelson (who was just eliminated from the heavyweight tournament by Matt Mitrione) against Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović. And there's a rumour that won't die that the Ice Man hisself, Chuck Liddell, is interested in one more fight ...somewhere. Liddell and DW are BFFs but I have suspicions that even Dana White isn't mercenary enough to put 48-year-old Chuck back in the ring against any of his current stable of LHWs. So if it happens, my money's on Bellator.

I'll only watch Lesnar vs. Jones if its to the death! :lol:

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

I've always thought letting Cyborg into the UFC was a mistake because she would kill their women's division (and for not necessarily good reasons). She was (roughly) a 15-to-1 favourite at UFC 222, and how many fans would pay $60 USD to watch what was predicted to be such a lopsided fight? She's not an 'elegant' fighter by any definition I am familiar with, so her fights lack aesthetic appeal. Knowing what a mismatch it was before they made it, it beggars imagination why they would make such a fight the main event at a UFC (as opposed to a Fight Night or a UFC on Fox). Early reports are it was the lowest-selling PPV they've had in 10 years, even lower than Demitrious :"Mighty Mouse" Johnson's numerous underperformances. And to add insult to injury, she'll be paid half a million USD, not including any win bonus or a rumoured percentage of the gate. Which adds up to a rather un-healthy chunk of an already meagre profit.


PEDs dealer to the stars, Victor Conte (of BALCO fame) has offered that he thinks that Jon Jones is the victim of tainted steroids. Not a tainted supplement, a tainted steroid. The steroids themselves are among the more expensive of PEDs, which makes it unlikely to the extreme that they could accidentally find their way into a bottle of much cheaper "supplements" such as creatine or hydroxycut. He thinks Jones believed what he was taking was some anabolic steroid or other which he believed was undetectable, but which contained at least some detectable level of Turinabol, which is an old school GDR PED (think: young Jan Ullrich), and is highly detectable.

My regular MMA news aggregator crashed last week and I missed this bit of news. Jones latest doping violation occurred at a fight in Anaheim, California, and last week he appeared before the California athletic commission to argue his case. It did not go well for Bones, in part because his only defence came from an "expert" witness who based his argument on information from a body building website. During the hearing, board members also spoke disdainfully to Jones, borderline mockingly, and ended up lifting his California fighting licence and fining him $205,000. Jones didn't help his case in the least by admitting he had never read USADA's mandatory anti-PEDs training guide, and that the signature on the training materials attesting that he had read them was a forgery.

And he still has the USADA "come to Jesus" to look forward to, which could result in a 1 to 4 year (retroactive) suspension. My guess is he's looking at the bigger end of that unless he comes up with a more cogent defence. He "technically" could re-apply for a California licence as early as this coming August but board members suggested they would not consider it until he has served out whatever suspension USADA hands out.

Implied but not stated, Conte clearly numbers among those who are in a position to know who believe that there are anabolic steroids which USADA's tests don't catch.


The latest Ice Man rumour is that Liddel is set to sign a 3-fight deal with Bellator, after which he will be paid to be their shill.


And speaking of Bellator, I found this Cro Cop meme amusing.

If you weren't aware, his motto is "Right leg, hospital. Left leg, cemetery."

Some are questioning whether the upcoming Bellator fight is legal because Cro Cop took a Rizin fight in Japan (and out of USADA's jurisdiction) while he was supposed to have been serving a 2-year USADA suspension for an HGH positive. I like watching Cro-Cop fight because he is a legitimate real-world bad-ass. His day job is as a police anti-terrorist commando. And there's no mystery to his fight trategy. The overwhelming majority of his bouts end with somebody knocked out.


And under the heading, "You call that news? an Australian study claims MMA fighters are the most aggressive weight-cutters in all of pugilism.

 

[jmdirt]

CMcG has gone WAY too far!
http://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/23045696/conor-mcgregor-arrested-following-incident-barclays-center

 

[Jspear]

His pride and elevated sense of self worth are higher than most anyone I can think of. What a stupid, criminal thing to do. I hope there’s some actual consequences.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

His pride and elevated sense of self worth are higher than most anyone I can think of. What a stupid, criminal thing to do. I hope there’s some actual consequences.

I found his over the top showman bravado entertaining. He has gone WAY beyond that with this criminal activity. He might have $100 Mil in the bank, but he just took away other fighters' ability to make money. The payday from this fight is what those people live on, now they won't get that check (actually they should get in from CMcG). What if Borg's eye doesn't heel correctly?! CMcG might have changed this kids life forever!

I don't buy pay per view, but I frequently go to a fun event to watch UFC. If CMcG does ever fight again I will not watch.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

He's done. He and Jon Jones should go into business together. I'm thinking maybe building demolitions, or hiring out to put on rowdy parties so the landlord will terminate your lease. Or a gourmet food truck.

At the moment it looks like three fighters will be pulled from the card because of that incident. One is one of McGregor's peeps, who was pulled as a disciplinary measure, and the other two were inside the bus and injured by flying glass. I don't see DW ever forgiving McGregor for muffing-up three fights on the same card.

On top of that, Max Holloway failed his medical (for reasons not yet disclosed) so the card is down to 10 fights and they've moved Magomedsharipov vs Bochniak to the headliner. The UFC can't give away tickets when the main event is a featherweight fight, even if it's a championship bout, so I expect a lot of people who'd bought PPVs & live tickets will be asking for their money back.

DW has remarked that he won't try to bail McGregor out this time. Oddsmakers are giving better than even money that McG will do jail time for this and lose his contract with the UFC.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

I just had a telephone conversation with a friend who is a YUGE fan of perfeshnal wrasslin'. He's seen the video of the loading dock incident and he SWEARS it was produced by Vince McMahon. He thinks there were too many cellphone videographers stationed too ideally to follow the action for it not to have been pre-planned coverage. And to him it bore all the earmarks of an unstaged (but staged) McMahon live event. And he also mentions that the WWE's biggest event of the year -- Wrestlemania -- happens to be scheduled to take place this weekend (albeit in a different city). So he also thinks this was McGregor auditioning for a job in the WWE. Which he passed, in flying colours.

Whilst we were on the phone I was watching the video of McGregor's court appearance (FF to ~33 minutes to see McGregor perp-walked into the courtroom). When it was done he was ordered to bond out for $50,000. I was surprised he didn't pull a gold Rolex President off his wrist and toss it to the judge and tell her, "Keep the change, sweetheart."

 

[Irondan]

Re:

CMcG has gone WAY too far!
http://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/23045696/conor-mcgregor-arrested-following-incident-barclays-center

You can take the thug off the streets, but you can never take the streets out of a thug.

This behavior also stinks of roid rage..

 

[macbindle]

That was my thought too.

(but, I have too say, that trolley throw beats any bike toss I've ever seen)

 

[Irondan]

Mr. McGregor is probably the 3rd dumbest pugilist/MMA fighter that I can recall of in my years of following combat sport.

Heres' my top five dummies...

1 - Mike Tyson
2 - Tommy Morrison
3 - Conar McGregor
4 - Jon Jones
5 - Evander Holyfield

 

[macbindle]

It's an occupational hazard. Not good to start from a low base, however.

 

[Irondan]

Re:

It's an occupational hazard. Not good to start from a low base, however.

All the money in the world can't fix stupid, but it does however, allow stupidity to shine brightly.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

I just had a telephone conversation with a friend who is a YUGE fan of perfeshnal wrasslin'. He's seen the video of the loading dock incident and he SWEARS it was produced by Vince McMahon. He thinks there were too many cellphone videographers stationed too ideally to follow the action for it not to have been pre-planned coverage. And to him it bore all the earmarks of an unstaged (but staged) McMahon live event. And he also mentions that the WWE's biggest event of the year -- Wrestlemania -- happens to be scheduled to take place this weekend (albeit in a different city). So he also thinks this was McGregor auditioning for a job in the WWE. Which he passed, in flying colours.

Whilst we were on the phone I was watching the video of McGregor's court appearance (FF to ~33 minutes to see McGregor perp-walked into the courtroom). When it was done he was ordered to bond out for $50,000. I was surprised he didn't pull a gold Rolex President off his wrist and toss it to the judge and tell her, "Keep the change, sweetheart."

Yep, there is a ton of stuff on the www about it being a planned/staged thing, but I have to repeat, he took money from other fighters and damaged Borg's eye.

 

[May0maniac]

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing was partially scriped/pre-arranged and Conor just took it way to far, the UFC loves to use fake drama, staged weigh-in brawls and Professional Wrestling stuff like that to ssell fights.