MMA referee Marc Goddard was disgusted by a viral fight that pit a woman versus a 500 lb man.
In Russia recently Darina Madzyuk fought Grigory Christyakov in an intergender MMA fight. Chistyakov reportedly weighed in at 529 lbs for the contest. This freak show fight was promoted by an organization named OUR BUSINESS (per RT).
Madzyuk won the fight, forcing the much larger man to tap from strikes.
Here’s how Bloody Elbow’s resident freak-fight specialist Victor Rodriguez saw described the fight:
After pressing her against the cage, Chistyakov seemed to have run out of answers, and after being separated and making their way to the center of the cage, the tables were turned. Madzyuk started throwing hands and Chistyakov appeared to be clueless on defense. After getting hit and falling forward, he basically stayed there while Madzyuk kept spamming punches to the head, forcing the ref to stop the bout.
Afterwards, they all posed for this photo in which it appeared they had just hunted down and slain an exotic rhino. At least Chistyakov seemed to have had a good attitude about it.
If you want to watch this ‘contest’, you can view it here.
One person who was not entertained by the spectacle was veteran MMA referee Marc Goddard. He took to twitter to express his disgust.
“This is what we are dealing with – in 2020,” he wrote (ht talkSPORT). “This is what we are fighting against as the parallels & negative connotations are continually drawn. To outsiders & detractors this is MMA. Shameful. Sickening. Abysmal.”
Intergender combat sports has been attempted before. This summer CamSoda included an intergender grappling match on their Fight Circus Vol. 1 event. In 2013 Andre Pedemeiras’ Shooto organization promised an intergender MMA fight at Shooto Brazil 45. Thankfully, those plans were later canceled.
In 2007 women’s MMA pioneer Ediane Gomes fought a man in an unsanctioned bare knuckle vale tudo fight in Brazil.