I’m a little late to the follow-up party on this one, but this story was so dumb from the start that it’s worth putting a lid on it. Last week, it was revealed that the folks at Shooto Brazil had scheduled what was believed to be the first ever professional MMA fight between a man and a woman at Shooto 45, which took place last Friday. While even a representative of the Brazilian Mixed Martial Arts Confederation was skeptical that a fight between Emerson Falcao and Juliana Velasquez would happen – what with Falcao recovering from an injury – it was still a possibility, as the fight card hadn’t been submitted as of the day before the fight.
If it was a hoax, Shooto was apparently going all-in, as both Falcao and Velasquez showed up for the Friday weigh-in and even faced off as fighters do. Both fighters told the press that they were going to fight, and Falcao even said that this was the first of many male-female MMA fights to come.
“I was hired to fight, and I’m going there to fight,” Falcao said. “My job is to train and fight. This is the first of the many man vs. woman fights that will come in the future. You’ll see. This is going to be huge. We’re here to shock the world.” (Via MMA Fighting)
And then, of course, it just never happened. Why? For the sake of awareness.
“We can’t do something like that,” [CBMMA representative Osiris] Maia said. “(The promoter) can ask everything, even a MMA fight with three guys against one, but we obviously won’t allow it.”
“This ‘fight’ has a social representation that is more important for the society than to the sport,” he continued. “There’s no way a man should fight a woman. This is being done only to show the society the importance of ‘Lei Maria da Penha’. You can’t have a man beating a woman in a sport, so it shouldn’t happen anywhere. That’s what they want to show.”
Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to stick to the classics in order to watch a guy fight a woman in an organized, professional atmosphere.
