Better To Walk Out Than To Be Carried Out

Another friend in the boxing world, Lisa Creech Bledsoe, who runs a blog called The Glowing Edge, posted the fight above on her blog and commented on it.  This was a fight between Holly Holm and Anne Sophie Mathis.  I agreed with Lisa's assessment of how badly this bout was handled by Holm's corner as well as the referee.

Francisco Rodriguez died in the ring around Thanksgiving in 2009, and the month before, Rita Figueroa suffered a near-fatal hit during a match.  Both of those professional fights happened near the tail end of the Chicago Park District's amateur boxing tournament season.  I remember a lot of fights I saw after that were stopped at the first hint of a boxer being in trouble.  I was in a fight with Meg in December of that year that was stopped because I was taking too many hits.  People complain about fights being stopped all the time, as the one between Holm and Mathis was, eventually.  Blood lust gets the best of some spectators, and they just want to see someone stomped down.

I like to see a good beat down as much as the next person.  I cheer on the antics of professional wrestlers, despite the fact that the outcomes of all those type of matches were planned long before the wrestlers came into the ring (but pro wrestlers can and do get hurt for real sometimes. . .some have even died due to injuries).  When my siblings and I were kids, we'd fall out laughing at the fisticuffs between roller derby players, some of which were fake, and some of which were real.  I appreciate the moves I see in MMA.  I only pay attention to mainstream sports when I've heard that a brawl broke out on the playing field. 

However, I'd rather see a boxer walk out of the ring after a match than be carried out.  I usually don't bat an eye at the brutality in some matches, but the Holm/Mathis had me wincing.

As I watched the post-fight interview, I felt bad for Holm.  I even got -- and this is something I seldom admit to, folks -- teary-eyed.  I know the feeling of being on the losing end of a match, feeling embarrassed, frustrated, and angry about "Damn, I wish I could have done better!", while still trying to exhibit good sportsmanship.  I know we should all be adults about losing, but I sometimes go back to being that little girl on the schoolyard who just took a beating from two or more kids (which I did on a near daily basis back in grade school).  The ref and/or Holm's corner should have never let that fight go on that long.  Holm shouldn't have had to be knocked through the ropes and her cheek cut open before people finally woke up and decided enough was enough.  She could have been seriously, maybe even permanently hurt.  I give Mathis credit for not gloating over Holm's prone position in the ring. 

Boxing is a rough sport, but common sense among officials and corner people should never disappear once the bell to start the round begins.