According to the first news from MMAJunkie, Gina Carano failed to make weight again:

 

• Gina Carano (142.75) vs. Kelly Kobold (141)

But wait! third time's the charm:

Gina Carano weighed in at 142.75 pounds on her first attempt. After removing all of her clothes, a towel-covered Carano weighed in a second time at 142.5 pounds. On her third attempt Carano weighed 141 pounds.

So take that, haters! Oh, wait...
Also:

• Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos (148.5) vs. Yoko Takahashi (148.5)
  

Unless they've been hiding something, I don't think there's a 148.5 division, so Santos and Takahashi seem to have screwed up as well.

 

According to Nicholas Lembo, counsel to the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board in the New York Times:

"He [Miragliotta] thought at the end of the second round that they were both completely exhausted and was keeping a close eye on both of them," Lembo said. "Kimbo happened to get off the first couple clean shots and, in his judgment and his experience, he thought Thompson was done."

...which is at least accurate. It's not the way that most fights get stopped, but they were certainly both gassing. The difference between the fighters was that Thompson knew that in that situation he could take the fight to the ground, protect himself and pound out Kimbo. Kimbo had no such option, and was thus in greater danger of injury.

Also, and I never thought I'd be typing this, the New York Times has a shout-out to MMA Junkie:

"Way to go ‘Dirty Dan' Miragliotta!" read one post on mmajunkie.com. "What were your instructions? If Kimbo doesn't get knocked out, make sure he wins the fight?"

Another added, "This is the beginning of the end of M.M.A."

Great - the trolls are taking over the Gray Lady too.

An intriguing line of speculation from the fan posts. Kid Nate

Following upon my post  about how not making weight may have been a good move for Gina Carano, I have some questions about the kind of reasoning Kaitlin Young had to do. 

There's been a lot of talk about how "the fix was in" for some of the fights at EliteXC Primetime. But what if it made more sense for a fighter to lose than to win? I don't have any evidence, there's no reason to suspect that anyone threw a fight, and until the payouts are released this is just idle speculation, but it's an interesting thought exercise.

Stated simply: what if the 12.5% that Young got from losing to Carano was more than her win bonus?

The information about the deal that was worked out has been very vague, but it sounds like Young was to receive her base pay, her win bonus if applicable, and 12.5% of whatever Carano made. What we don't know is if that percentage was of her fight pay, her win pay, or her combined pay, and this makes a huge difference. The way it was reported certainly sounded like the primary factor was Carano's combined pay. We can safely assume that Carano is making more than Young, but how much is up in the air. But there's a good chance that it was significant. Let's try some math: 

If Young was paid $10K to fight and $10K to lose, and Carano was paid $100K to fight and $100K to win, winning the fight would get Young $32.5K: $10K + $10K + $12.5. Losing would get her $35K: $10K + $25K. Now I obviously made those numbers up, but for a first time fighter and a headliner, that doesn't sound too unreasonable. In fact, it might be a bit conservative.

But let's play with the numbers: If Young were paid $4K/$4K - a reasonable amount - and Gina still made $100K/$100K, winning would get Kaitlin $20.5K, while losing would get her $33K. If Gina made $50K/$50K, the difference between winning and losing is $14.25K/$18.5K. 

Obviously, it's all more complicated than this. Winning has other consequences than just a bonus: more and better sponsors, higher pay for the next fight, and even a long-term contract are all worth something. But that all depends on how risk averse Young is. Would it be better to make an additional few thousand and risk tanking her career? Who can say?

This is of course not an attempt to say that Young threw the fight: she was clearly fighting very hard, and she doesn't seem like the kind of person who would be motivated to risk her career for a few extra dollars. But there are fighters who have more bills and less scruples than her, and this kind of arrangement (large difference in fighter pay, penalties assessed as a percentage) is clearly a moral quagmire waiting to happen.

Organizations need to come up with a different way of arranging for these penalties, before this kind of problem becomes an issue. But again: this is all speculation. What do you think?

I think a lot of people are missing something in the Gina Carano weigh-in scandal. Yes, she failed to make weight, but she also failed to try to make weight. 3.5 pounds (or 3 pounds depending on if the clothing rule is true) is a lot to lose at that weight (and yes, weight is a more difficult thing to manage for women in general - not being sexist, just being realistic), but she probably could have done it. Since she had the deal in place to trade those 3.5 pounds for an eighth of her purse even before she went to the weigh-in, she had time where she could have been cutting weight that she instead spent cutting a deal.

I'm guessing that the thinking went something like this: Carano could attempt the cut and end up weakened in mind and body which would mean risking her win bonus - and therefore a full half of her pay.  Or she could save herself a miserable cut and just get to where she could on the scale but come in as fresh and strong as possible, all for an eighth of her pay. That means making 75% more than if she lost the fight.

And I'd call that a pretty savvy deal.

Yes, you can argue that it would be better for her to have made weight. But was that a realistic option? Should she have spent the limited training time she had focusing on sharpening up her striking and jiu-jitsu, or going on a "Crash" (pardon the pun) diet? Now that we know the pressure she was under in having to agree to take this fight in order to keep her job with NBC, and recognizing that we don't know everything else going on in her personal life that might have been affecting her weight, it's easy to see that while the choice she made wasn't ideal, it may have been the smartest economic move available to her.

More fun stuff from the fan posts. Keep 'em coming! Kid Nate

A lot of grumbling is going on in regards to Kimbo Slice's crappy cardio and his complete lack of a ground game. And that's fair: the man has work to do to live up to his hype. But who's to blame for that hype? i'd lay that at the feet of Gary Shaw and CBS. Slice is doing his best to sell himself, but he's never claimed to be anything other than what he is: a good street-fighter who is still learning MMA. Gary Shaw is the one saying that he'd beat Mike Tyson. 

But there's been a lot of hype for Kaitlin Young as well. The odd thing is that almost none of it came from EliteXC: Shaw was too busy hyping Slice and Gina Carano to worry about doing any more than claiming that Young was a game opponent for Carano. Bloggers for several sites got interviews with the 22-year-old college student and published breathless reports of her prowess in striking and on the ground. It was reported that she'd knocked 3 opponents out in one night, owing to her extensive Muay Thai training, and that she'd be better on the ground than Carano because she'd participated in some grappling tournaments. 

The fact that the three girls she knocked out that night were all participating in their first event? Or that her 4 KOs were against women who now have a combined record of 4-5? Not important, even though Carano has beaten well-known fighters like Tonya Evinger and Julile Kedzie. What about the fact that her first MMA event was a short 7 months ago? Not an issue, even though Carano has been fighting and training MMA with one of the best camps in the world for 2 years. And what about that Muay Thai training? Young is 3-2 in amateur competition, while Carano was 12-1-1 as a professional and the first American woman to win a Muay Thai championship in Thailand. 

Much was made of a video, circulated by Young's camp, of her flipping tires and puling a truck across a parking lot, even though she is clearly the smaller and weaker of the two. Not to mention that the last mixed martial artist to be featured doing so-called "caveman" training was Young's teammate at the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy Sean Sherk, who was subsequently stripped of his title for testing positive for steroids. 

In hindsight, it's no surprise that Carano dominated the fight from beginning to end. While her shooting schedule for American Gladiators clearly shortened her training camp and left her overweight and out of breath during the fight, she had more than enough strength and skill to take out Young. When fighting on the ground, Young attempted one strike and no submission attempts.  Working from her back, Carano on the other hand, quickly brought her leg up to attempt a gogoplata submission - a relatively advanced technique. By the fight's end, the only damage done to Carano was a little smeared mascara, while Young looked as though she'd been hit by a truck. But this wasn't exactly a surprise: Carano was up against a smaller opponent with less experience who was facing top competition for the first time in her first televised fight. Who can win in that situation?

The blogosphere likes to view itself as free of many of the sins of the mainstream media. But bloggers are just as likely to fall for a convincing story-line in the face of overwhelming evidence as anyone. When a likable fighter talks herself up, we listen without questioning what she says. We like to be skeptical of what we hear from the news outlets, but we must apply that skepticism to our own work as well.