Renato Moicano earned the solemn respect of MMA fans for saving the UFC 272 co-main event while persevering through a severe beatdown from Rafael dos Anjos.
Conversations following the fight have focused on the ethics of allowing a bloodied-and-battered Moicano to fight to the last bell. He stepped in to replace Rafael Fiziev just days before the fight after Fiziev contracted Covid-19.
Outspoken UFC fighter Dan Hooker believes that athletic commissions can set more reliable precedents to protect fighter safety. He discussed the dos Anjos-Moicano fight with The AllStar’s John Hyon Ko on The AllStar MMA Live, a post-show that follows every UFC event.
Hooker was skeptical that one of the parties with fight-stopping authority would stop the bout after the fourth round, even as Moicano limped to his corner, his head bleeding profusely. As it stands, the referee, a cage-side doctor, and a cornerman may each step in to stop the fight if they believe a fighter’s health is at risk.
“Watching that fight, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen, any one of them because it’s not how our sport is constructed at the moment. It will one day. One day, the tide will turn. I would say it’s kind of like precedents in court cases. It’s like one precedent is set in a court case, and then everyone else can use it. But we don’t have a precedent, right?”
“Such precedents already exist in boxing due to the longevity of the sport,” Hooker said.
“We’ve seen what happens to older boxers, and we’ve seen that it does shorten their careers, and we’ve seen that it does give these guys long-term ill-health effects. So that’s why the precedent has been set in boxing.”
Protecting fighters from their own stubbornness goes farther than fear of lifelong health problems, but also comes down to creating better protocol when an athlete is close to the line. One way promotions and commissions can normalize more cautious stoppages is by removing the negative stigma around fighters publicly choosing to quit a fight, Hooker explained.
The pressure on fighters to prove their toughness only multiplies when the production of the event magnifies the visibility of the choice: “The referee turns to the fighter on camera, and there’s a million people watching the fight, all your friends and family are watching the fight- and the referee goes on camera with a microphone, ‘Do you want to keep fighting? Or do you want to be a little bitch?'”
Hooker agreed that doctors could use more clear processes with predictable outcomes to decide if an athlete can continue or not. Hooker cited the recent Alexander Volkanovski-Brian Ortega fight as an example, stating that even though Ortega couldn’t tell a doctor how many fingers he held up, he was still allowed to compete.
“How hard is it to have an actual test you have to pass before the round continues? How hard is it for the doctors to close an eye and hold something up and say, ‘how many dots do you see?,’ and if you can’t answer it, the fight is off.”
