Cheating hurting Boxing/MMA

For the second straight week, a big time main event fight has been cast a dark cloud of alleged cheating. As convincingly as Georges St. Pierre defeated BJ Penn in their much publicized and anticipated UFC rematch last Saturday January 31, questions have been raised regarding St. Pierre’s corner tactics of rubbing Vaseline all over his body in between rounds. The significance of this is that in mixed martial arts especially against grapplers- which Penn is- the less friction and more slippery you are, the better your chances are of eluding and escaping from your opponents holds.

Just a week ago, a similar controversy was raised in boxing when Antonio Margarito was caught with illegal hand wraps. Margarito was forced to re-wrap his fists and ended up losing via 9^th round KO to Sugar Shane Mosley. Margarito’s and his camp have denied responsibility for any intentional wrongdoing but it’s safe to say the damage has been done. Who’s to know whether he used those similar “tactics” when he knocked out Miguel Cotto and Kermit Cintron in his previous fights?

As a fight fan, all I want to see are good, clean, hard fought fights between two athletes at the top of their games giving their all to come out on top. Nothing else leaves a more bitter taste in my mouth than controversy brought upon by cheating. Yes, it’s the same reason why I can’t respect Mark McGuire and all the doped up cheaters out there. Call me naïve, call me too conventional or whatever you want but I just can’t stand cheaters. But how prevalent is cheating really in the fight game?

I spoke to a retired boxer who wanted to remain anonymous regarding cheating in boxing. He told me that the plaster of Paris would definitely give a boxer a significant edge but also endangers those who use it by risking breaking their fists. He also told me stories about boxers putting some kind of liquid on their gloves to momentarily impair their opponents’ vision when the solution gets in contact with the opponent’s eyes. I remember back in the old UFC days when Royce Gracie would use his gi to choke his opponents and gain leverage from it and also when he held on to Kimo’s hair in UFC 3. And how about those days when it wasn’t illegal in the UFC to hit anyone in the groin? With that said, I guess it’s safe to say that most fighters would take any advantage he could get, but the difference is whether you are playing within the rules or knowingly breaking it.

I just hope the governing bodies would tighten up their measures in reinforcing the rules to keep all the fights fair and legit and not just clamp down and take notice when it’s a big fight. It’s a shame really and taints not only the fighters but the game as well. If they can’t clean the game up, we all might as well be watching WWE.

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Nover Back in UFC 98