Following widespread criticism of middleweight champion Anderson Silva’s antics against challenger Demian Maia as well as questions over the scoring of Frankie Edgar’s upset of lightweight champ BJ Penn, yet another controversy has emerged from Saturday’s UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi.
As seen above, Silva’s gloves were not taped for his matchup with Maia, but according to cutman Stitch Duran it was a simple oversight that he promised won’t happen again.
“The guys in the back screwed up,” Duran posted on Twitter. “Burt Watson, our coordinator was not happy. Will not happen again, guarenteed!”
Because Abu Dhabi lacks an athletic commission to oversee MMA events, UFC vice president of regulatory affairs Marc Ratner, the former executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, assumed the role for UFC 112.
NSAC rules, which are used for overseas events, require gloves be “examined by the representative of the Commission and the referee,” but do not explicitly require taping, though the practice is rarely skipped, with every other fighter on the card having their gloves taped.
The tape is used to prevent fighters from tampering with the gloves after they’ve been inspected, and also indicates the fighter’s corner.
For comparison, see the taped gloves of Penn and Edgar in the photo below.
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I think mexican jumping beans had been placed in andersons glooves?
Yeah i noticed that on the day of the fight. Thought it was weird
You can call it controversial if you want, but Edgar won that fight, maybe not 50-45, but BJ was broken and new he lost that fight. BJ only counterpunched the entire match and landed 1 or 2 solid punches a round, compared to Edgar’s constant pressure and punches.
“Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam”
Just putting it out there!
He was on topic. It was mentioned in the article about Edgar and Penn.
Its also possible that Penn was counter-punching because he was so busy stuffing over 90% of Edgar’s takedowns…
think you need to read this sir! http://fightmetric.com/fights/Edgar-Penn.html
This is pretty much how i scored it. I gave bj round 1 and 2 with edgar 3 thru 5. The Third round was the closest as Fight Metric has shown.
I think post-112 the very LEAST of Anderson Silva’s concerns will be his gloves not having been taped…
lol indeed
If this was simply an oversight, as Stitch indicated, then it certainly needs to be corrected, if for no other reason than to avoid casting unnecessary doubt on the whether or not fighters were within the rules.
I’m glad that seems to be the case, because it would be truly disconcerting if there were some intentional shenanigans with Silva’s gloves, in addition to the other crap that came out of this fight.
That would have been one Chitty Impression for the UAE to have on mma. Glad there wasnt but man it was weird seeing that. I always thought it was mandatory for tape to be around there gloves with an officals signature on it (and i it should be) but if it was just a procaution then maybe then should make it part of the unified rules. Last thing this sport needs is some donkey to weight down there glove and throw controversy in this sport
It looks to me like Silva has a bit too much white tape coming out of the wrist of the gloves. Comparing it to Maia, Edgar, and Penn, he seems to be using much more tape than “normal”.
maia doesnt have any tape on his hands at all… on noes
which would only indicate… well nothing… You tape to a certain anatomical point on the wrist and Anderson has the longest reach.
It should be noted that the tape jobs are also inspected. They usually tape the wrists and have those inspected and then the gloves are put on and the colored tape is then put on with an officials signature. Then both are cut and collected after the fight.
Let’s stress this was just an OVERSIGHT and not try to turn this into a long “he cheats” thread.
It would indicate that since more tape usually mean less chance for injury, Silva used more tape to further prevent injury.
I wonder if the tape jobs were inspected by the same guy who puts the coloured tape on the fighters’ wrists.
Oversights CAN lead to injustices…..
edgar won that fight for the symple reason that he was more agressive and creating the exchanges…..counter punching and waiting for a one punch ko will not get you the win….very close but good decision imo
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with this article- Chris L.
He obviously cheats.. Everyone knows when you fail to tape your gloves your opponent has a much harder time hitting you because of the wind resistance that comes with untaped gloves. This may even be a bigger problem to MMA than greasegate or myster of what happened to chuck liddel’s chin…
please tell me there should be a wink at the end of this…
I’m pretty sure that was sarcasmical.
Speaking of “winks”, am I the only one having trouble getting the emotes to work?
Were they disabled somehow?
If so, they should be re-enabled ASAP to avoid any miscommunication between posters.
Apologies for the off-topicality, BTW…
emoticons are disabled until some kinks are worked out
The red tape is more wind resistant than the blue tape too… so I cant imagine why he did’nt insist on getting it! At least thats the word on the streets! haaaaaaaaa
I’m not 100% positive but don’t the unified rules prohibit “verbal abuse” during the fight? Although it would seem pretty hypocritical to enforce it now against Silva (since every fight Nate Diaz has been in, he has cussed out his opponent in the cage and I’m sure there have been many more) but when your main event fighter is being a total d-bag and not conducting himself properly you’ve got to do something. Mirgaliota should have stepped up and done something earlier.
as it so happens that is a foul… however… as both fighters were Brazilian and Miragliotta to my knowledge is not fluent in Portuguese that is a hard foul to enforce. Also most refs will allow it because they know just as well as anyone that this is also entertainment so they will let a lot slide.
if he would have had his gloves taped he wouldnt have been so fast making it easier for maia to block punches to his face and also it would have been easier for maia to pull gaurd on silva.
anderson silva does not have to tamper with his gloves haha trust me. it is stupid that this is even a story
Only being mentioned because this never happens. I keep trying to stress there’s no issue with tampering but the fact they missed this is pretty big. It’s one of those safeguards against tampering. It’s not an issue with Silva but more the officials.
IMO it also sends a message that maybe some things weren’t 100% in order in AD?
And this has NOTHING to do with Silva’s “performance” against Maia, I’m talking about dressing room area stuff…
Edgar looked like a mongoose in this fight!
I thought it was awesome.
Anyone in favour of punishing Anderson Silva for his performance against Maia, and Leites and Cote for that matter, and stripping him of the middleweight title? A Grand Prix would then be held for the middleweight crown and would include A Silva, W Silva, Belfort, Sonnen, Maia, Marquardt, Bisping and Cote or Dan Miller – no disrespect to Akiyama or Palahares or anyone else who is vying for a shot.
The spider has spoken at the length about wanting to mark his place in history as one of the greatest of all time – and he will regardless of a Grand Prix – but this also ensures his conduct as champion will not be forgotten either. This also gives Dana a chance to give back to the fans and have some revenge on Silva. Than fans get a card of epic proportions. All of the guys who are itching to get a crack at Silva and the belt, will have their opportunity. The only major downside to this is the UFC will likely not be able to have a contending middleweight on their cards for 6 – 10 months. Fire away – hate the idea, love the idea, i don’t care, just fire away!
keep dreaming on the idea of a grand prix… Dana won’t do it…
leites just kept droping trying to pull gaurd the whole fight… how can you blame anderson for that?
Leites refused to strike with the better striker, Silva refused to grapple with the better grappler. Neither one of them fought that night.
Not that tournaments in MMA are necessarily a bad thing, but Dana White has said multiple times that he’d never drop a tourney-style event other than TUF.
Simply put, the man hates them.
When you consider that the UFC is Dana’s personal fight club, that means we aren’t going to be seeing them as long as he’s the Boss.
Also, with Bellator taking tournament MMA into and thru the stratosphere, it seems unlikely that the UFC would want to be seen riffin on someone else’s deal, if you follow.
As far as Anderson Silva is concerned, Dana should tell him and Ed Soares to head back to Brazil for the next 18 months, as sort of a “time out” for their bad behavior.
This will also serve as a cautionary tale for any other fighters and/or managers who think they’ve grown bigger than the promotion that got them where they are today.
During this time Silva won’t be earning, and he won’t be able to go earn anywhere else, which should make his sponsors less than delighted. Plus Soares will be out his cut of Silva’s earnings, which will probably have him singing a different tune if and when they return.
Something similiar worked wonders for Randy Couture, and I say this as the frenZy’s most dedicated Couturian.
The the UFC can let the 185 division sort itself out, add to their ranks with men like Brian Stann and Stephan Bonnar, and if absolutely necessary name an Interim titleholder for PPVs and such.
Apologies for the semi-off-topicality, but I thought that wm’s post deserved a detailed response…
I was really entertained with the first 2.5 rounds. I thought to myself how terrified I would have been to have someone yelling at me to hit them knowing I can’t and he can pretty much knock me out whenever he decides he’s had enough. The drunken monkey was pretty funny and effective, he also chased him around the ring while playing what looked like an air guitar and continued to punish. Give Maia some credit I thought he would have been out from a few shots he took in those rounds.
There’s a saying in Brazil that if “you’re black you better be pele” so imagine a black Brazilian fighting a white brazilian cop. Maybe anger, emotions got the best of Silva at the start and he really was gassed for the next 2 rounds. Just playing devil’s advocate here. You can’t blame silva for the Leites fight, everytime he went to engage Leites lied down like it was their wedding night.
Honestly Maia didn’t belong in that ring, Belfort was hurt so was Sonnen (who will get beat down) so I was actually thinking it would have been more fun to watch him beat up another LH instead.
I miss Big John… he would have never let that fight go like that and he probably wouldn’t have let un-inspected gloves in the ring. These other refs are clearly too wrapped up in the hype of being there to do their fair judgements.
Somebody has got to check those gloves and mark them to show proof of those gloves not coming off or tampered with. That’s what that tape is for. To prove the gloves have not come off and the taping underneath has not been tampered with. So who marked the gloves on the tape? Who put their initials on those gloves? How can something like that be overlooked by anybody? Somebody spotted it, but nobody came forward. They always initialed mine! Marked it somehow like those candle seals on envelopes back in the ancient times. To show the gloves are sealed and hasn’t been tampered with or opened.
Per the regulations, the gloves do not have to be marked or taped. The only thing checked and marked is the hand wraps, and the gloves are inspected before they go on.
This fight was one of the most boring I’ve ever seen. I hope Dana White won’t let Silva go inside the Octagon for a long time. Been Waiting for Kimbo’s turn!