Take this one with a grain of salt, but with the way that many fighting promotions are desperate to stay alive these days, I’m honestly surprised that this hasn’t already happened more. According to MMA Fighting, at this Friday’s Shooto Brazil event in Rio de Janiero, bantamweight Juliana Velasquez is set to make her debut against Emerson Falcao, and that’s interesting because Juliana is a woman and Emerson is a man. While Velasquez is confident that she has what it takes, I think I speak for a lot of us when I say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
So how on Earth could Emerson agree to fight a woman? Well, that’s where it all becomes a little hazy. According to a post on his Facebook account – poorly translated from Portuguese – Emerson isn’t even healthy enough to fight.
Galera unfortunately got injured training me to fight and I can not participate in the next edition of the wgp. I’m waiting for the result of resonance, but I have faith that there will be nothing serious, thanks for the support from all sponsors and friends, God willing I’ll soon be back in training with full force.
However, that is in regard to a WGP Kickboxing event, so maybe part of the rehab program is fighting a woman, I’m not entirely positive. Either way, MMA Fighting has an update from a member of the Brazilian Mixed Martial Arts Confederation who… doesn’t really have an exact answer about what is going on either.
“There’s nothing in the rules that specific prohibits a man to fight a woman, but when you interpret the rules you know that both athletes must be in the same level, so there’s no way a man should be allowed to fight a woman,” [Osiris] Maia told MMAFighting.com.
“We haven’t received the official card yet from the promotion, we’ll get that (on Thursday) at the weigh-ins,” he continued. “I wasn’t informed about that yet. They announced it to the media only, but if you ask me if we’re allowing it to happen, I don’t think so. I think it’s a disparity. We’ll see what’s going on tomorrow at the weigh-ins.”
Okay, I’ll go ahead and say it – out of sheer, stunned curiosity, I would watch this fight. Not because I want to watch a man beating the crap out of a woman – or a woman humiliating her male opponent in the MMA bro culture, for that matter – but because I can’t not look at a car crash. Still, this whole thing just seems like a PR stunt to get us talking, which has worked, obviously, but beyond the chatter? I wouldn’t watch unless I was guaranteed that this is what the crowd would look like:
(Images via Getty)
