Who's Really to Blame for the Brutality Between Cris "Cyborg" Santos and Jan Finney?

This is a fight that never should have happened in the first place. The blame needs to be put on them, first and foremost.

I had no problem with the ref letting them fight, it was very brutal but Cyborg just didn’t finish her in the first round and Finney had no problem answering the bell for the second. Finney was obviously outclassed and had no business in there but as long as she was able to continue then the ref is supposed to let them go. It’s not the ref’s job to stop a fight just because the matchmaker was a bonehead.

I do agree completely on the Athletic commission’s role here. Has CSAC ever stood up and said that an opponent just wasn’t competitive enough? Because in this situation they probably should have. Cuddles showed a lot of heart but she had no business being in there with Cyborg and you really have to wonder what CSAC was thinking when they rubber stamped this one? Strikeforce is to blame for making the fight and CSAC shouldn’t of ever allowed them to book it to start with.

She obviously heard those comments, got pissed off, and took out all that aggression on poor Jan Finney!

I still think the fight should have been stopped in the first the beating Cuddles was taking was brutal. I have mixed feelings on Winslow, what was all that shit how she was asking the fighters if they wanted to stand up I thought that was stupid.

But they did, and given that, Winslow had to referee the match. And I think she did an adequate job.

This wasn’t a sickening beatdown anymore than a great many fights we’ve seen before – they just happened to be fights between men.

Dan Henderson’s blatant shot to an unconscious Michael Bisping was far worse than anything we saw here. The Carlos Condit-Rory McDonald stoppage was more obviously late than this one was.

If Finney wanted out of the match at any point all she had to do is tap or yell tap to the ref and the fight woulda ended. She took a beating yes, but in my opinion she was inteligently defending herself right up until the end.

Anyone find a picture of Finney’s face after the fight?

Could they really not find anyone better? That’s what I want to know. Sure finney did better than most of us would but was mrs. 500 truly the only option they had? That’s what mindfucks me

Yes, the CSAC is to blame for sanctioning it. Yes, Strikeforce is to blame for booking it. Yes, Finney’s corner is probably to blame for not stopping it.

But Winslow shouldn’t get off without some blame either. Only in the loosest of definitions could "curling into the fetal position on the ground and occasionally making a weak grab for a leg’ be considered ‘intelligent defense’.

It’s certainly reasonable to say that turtling for ten or fifteen seconds can be a legit defensive tactic to minimize damage after you’ve been dropped so you can regain your bearings. But when a fighter has been dropped a few times, is getting hit with repeated flush shots to the head both standing and on the ground (141 in a round and a half!), and is spending most of the round just covering up while getting mauled… that’s a fight that should be stopped.

This has nothing to do with it being women fighting, and even less to do with the ref being a woman. The ref screwed up, and could’ve gotten Finney badly hurt. I’m not saying we should ban her from reffing, but she should damn well have to explain herself to the CSAC.

Finney was taking a beating, but she kept coming back — she has a jaw of iron. And she didn’t just keep coming back, she kept landing solid shots. Some people can just flat out take an asskicking and keep on trucking, and she’s one of them. And those are the kind of people who end up getting the surprise win in the later rounds.

Matchmaker 100%

The corner should have thrown in the towel after the first round, but the ref should have also stopped the bout after the 2nd knockdown.

But it wasn’t an irresponsible match-up in my opinion. The only thing I didn’t care for was the ref asking questions in a language that the fighter might not have been able to fully understand. Everything else is just hysterics.

I thought she did a fine job. At the moments in which I felt a stoppage was coming, Cyborg backed away. While it was a massive beating, I thought everyone did their job. Perhaps the fight shouldn’t have happened, but overall — I don’t see the problem.

She was in the fight the entire fight. If she thought at any time Cyborg was too much she could have tapped. I think we are all bent out of shape on this one because of the location of reproductive organs. This is a brutal sport folks, Cyborg is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above EVERYONE. I’m not saying this was good or fair match making, but Finney had opportunity to quit MANY times.

And how?

Excellent article Mike,

I agree with all your points, plus the points other commenters make about the responsibility lying with SF, Coker & Chou.

Winslow did a competent job. The same way we realize that women fighters are still trying to establish themselves and in a growing phase, we also need to realize that the same goes for female referees.

All in all, I think Winslow performed to the best of her abilities, and should not be blamed for anything that transpired during the fight. The asking of Cyborg if she wanted Finney stood up was a bit distracting, but I kind of liked it, and if done more consistently, could be implemented by all refs as a good technique to help keep the flow of the fight.

The only problem I had with this fight was the fact that it was a horrible mismatch. It’s really not right to even call it a fight it was a mauling, and had no business being masqueraded as a legit title fight.

knew that there was going to be backlash in regard to the match up. But they certainly didn’t anticipate questionable officiating, and/or equally questionable medical care. On top of the CSAC’s incomprehensible incompetence, again, and again IMO.

you wouldn’t all cry and make a scene if the two fighters would’ve been male. cut the sexist bullcrap, book it under ‘unevenly matched’ and move on.

People are on here asking how in the world did this match-up get approved and going all “boo this man” at the commission, but weren’t there people going around trying to pump up Finney as having a reasonable chance, how she was actually better than her record might imply, and how she’s lost to quality fighters? I seem to remember this, but now people are acting like hindsight ain’t 20-20 cause while I saw people acknowledging that this could be a potential squash I certainly didn’t see anybody demanding that this fight not take place before.

..but I didn’t feel as though the stoppage was that awful.

I think the sex of the competitors is a major reason why there’s so much uproar about this fight. We see plenty of one-sided beatings that last too long in male mixed martial arts, but it seems like the way women’s MMA is watched/perceived is still skewed through a sexist lens.

When you put on gloves and climb into a cage, your sex becomes irrelevant. From the moment you step into that environment, you have committed yourself to the possibility that you will not walk out the same way you entered — but that is within your own power too.

If anything, Finney is equally to blame for not letting go of her pride. The reason we all watched her take that beating was because she insisted upon continuing.

I’m sure we’re all biased because it was an attractive woman getting beaten until she went limp six or seven times in one round, but she stopped defending herself about a minute into the round. She’d take punishment, go limp, Cyborg would let up slightly and she’d somehow crawl to her feet. That fight should have been stopped when she was laying on the ground after being dropped with punches, not defending herself in any real intelligent way. Them’s the rules, whether we’re all sexists for wanting referees to enforce them or not.

We’re the Athletic Commission, the ringside doctor, Strikeforce, and the fighter’s corner also responsible? In hindsight, yes, but realistically, stopping fights is something they only do in extreme situations. It was Kim Winslow’s job, first and foremost, to stop that fight. All the other groups mentioned implicitly put trust in her to do that when they agreed to her refereeing the fight, and none of them had the vantage point that she (and we, as television viewers) had.

The “concern” for Jan Finney is just another outlet for MMA fan’s misogyny. If this was a fight between two men, people would be putting it to music and sharing the HL video on Youtube.

Finney is a trained professional athlete; and it’s about time some people showed her respect as an actual human being.