Despite being told her arm was broken, Paige VanZant’s coach, Fabiano Scherner, didn’t consider throwing in the towel during her fight against Jessica-Rose Clark, and VanZant is glad he didn’t.
On its own, Fabiano Scherner’s decision to let Paige VanZant go back out for round 3 against Jessica-Rose Clark at UFC Fight Night: Stephens vs. Choi isn’t a particularly remarkable one. Despite having told her corner that she had broken her arm earlier in the fight, VanZant was still active in a back-and-forth bout, and actually won the last round, fighting behind a dynamic kicking game from range.
And, while Scherner admitted in a post-bout interview with MMA Fighting that he somewhat regretted not taking the injury to his athlete more seriously, VanZant herself was apparently quick to back up his decision to let the fight continue.
“I let the fight play out because at any moment she… She wasn’t using her right hand, but I was looking at her face and she didn’t appear to be in pain or anything like that, so I thought it was serious but that she could continue,” Scherner said. “I didn’t think about throwing in the towel. We spoke about it after the fight and I saw the X-ray, I apologized to her for making that call, and she said, ‘It was the right call because I wanted to go back and continue fighting. I would be disappointed if you had stopped the fight.’ I think it was the right call because she really wanted to go back.
”I didn’t ask her if she wanted to continue or not because she would lose confidence in the fight,” he adds. “I want to make clear that it was my decision to let the fight continue, and I would take all the responsibility if something worse had happened. But what matters to me is her opinion about it, and she was happy with my decision. She thought it was the right thing, and that’s what matters to me.”
End of the day, no harm, no foul. VanZant finished the fight, doesn’t appear to have been more badly injured than the initial break (although it’s debatable whether the break may have been worsened), and everybody involved seems reasonably content with the result (as much as VanZant might be with any loss).
Right?
More broadly speaking, Scherner’s inaction speaks to a MMA specific culture that decries throwing in the towel over injuries or concussions. VanZant, down two rounds, and unable to use one of her arms had only the slimmest chance of turning that fight around. The fact that she wanted to keep going only confirms what should come standard with her profession, she likes to fight.
But even faced with potentially impossible odds, coaches and officials around the sport often seem to see the towel as anything other than an option, whatever the circumstance. “You can’t say in every instance where your fighter is taking a beating it should be stopped, because fights do turn around sometimes. I am reluctant to throw towels in just for that very reason. If it’s that bad of a beating, I think that’s the referee’s job,” notable MMA coach Greg Jackson told MMA Junkie.
Coach Mark Henry once asked for the towel to throw during Frankie Edgar’s 2nd bout with Gray Maynard, at UFC 125. Had he actually done it, it may have permanently damaged his relationship with his fighter. “I told him afterwards,” Edgar said when asked about Henry calling for the towel, “when I heard he was calling for the towel, which I don’t think you can throw the towel in the UFC, which is a good thing. But I told him, ‘Dude, don’t you ever, ever throw the towel in.’”
Worth noting there is Edgar’s understanding surrounding rules and corner stoppages. He’s not technically wrong, but there’s plenty of history around corners getting a fight stopped. Just not much of it in the UFC, even when they actually make the attempt.
“I tried to stop the fight in the second round. There was a few guys in my corner from the commission, there was one guy from the UFC and I said, ‘Stop the fight.’ And they were like, ‘Sorry, no one can stop the fight but the referee or the doctor.’ That’s what they told me. So, I started freaking out,” Trevor Whitman told MMA Fighting, speaking of Nate Marquardt’s loss to Kelvin Gastelum.
As can be seen from examples like Henry’s and Whitman’s, even on the rare occasion coaches do consider – or even try – getting the fight stopped, they aren’t necessarily successful.
Some commissions consider corner interference a foul that could result in a DQ, but just as easily may be ignored by the referee at their discretion. And in general, the referee always has the final say on whether a fight continues or not. A trainer stepping up onto the ring has classically been a more definitive way to get a boxing match stopped, but it’s not an option the UFC’s Octagon provides.
All these circumstances – reluctant coaches, determined fighters, and potentially unobservant commission officials – make for an environment with very few checks and balances. And it’s led to some of the uglier in-cage moments in MMA history; Joe Warren’s infamous loss to Pat Curran springs to mind, as does Rick Glenn’s recent beating of Gavin Tucker.
Eventually, A sport that reps itself as among the safest full-contact contests in the world has a glaring hole when it comes to letting athletes take a prolonged beating, just because they’re willing.