(If you’re short on time, this image sums everything up pretty well.)

To say that Miesha Tate has been unhappy with the outcome of her Fight of the Night earning scrap against Cat Zingano during the TUF 17 Finale is putting things mildly. Despite controlling the first two rounds of the fight, Tate was eventually knocked out in the third round by Zingano. Tate immediately expressed that she felt that referee Kim Winslow stopped the fight early, but with Cat Zingano being sort-of busy for the time being, an immediate rematch has pretty much been out of the question.

That hasn’t exactly stopped Tate from trying. Yesterday, Tate posted a picture of herself in order to further demonstrate why she felt that the fight was stopped early, claiming that she wants a rematch against Zingano with a different referee overseeing the bout. Via Facebook:

“Post fight pic taken Monday, you all are wondering about my nose, its fine still a little swollen but im going to get the suspension lifted ASAP, and I will be back! Cant help my nose bleeds a lot still frustrated at the stoppage, think the ref freaked because of blood when she should have been focusing on the fact that I was still perfectly coherent and shooting for a takedown after two solid knees landed I was still in the fight and up on the score cards. Can’t pay enogh respect to Cat she’s a warrior & I’d love the honor of fighting her in the future again but NOT with Kim Winslow as the ref”

(The Twitter avatar of a rational man capable of leading the nation, obviously. Props to Fightlinker for the find.)

Background: Like many of you, I was very upset when Ben Goldstein published a post about South Dakota State Representative Steve Hickey’s ridiculous tirade against MMA, but probably not for the same reasons that you may have been. As a Christian, I found it odd that a pastor would not only write things about death that I felt contradicted the messages contained in the Bible, but also cite Forrest Gump while doing so. It’s bad enough for a pastor to write that he can’t muster up sympathy for a person who has died because said person was just asking for it through his hobbies – I cringe picturing Hickey’s stance on rape if it’s anything like his stance on death – but to essentially say that a dim-witted, fictional Hollywood character has more wisdom than the person who your entire religion is built around is just completely unacceptable.

And that’s when I made the mistake of emailing Hickey, telling him that while I couldn’t care less what his opinion on MMA is, his stance on death is disgusting to me. For whatever reason, I was expecting a completely rational response. Instead, Hickey published an “Open Letter to Christian MMA fans” that I can’t help but feel is sort-of directed at me, where he accuses me of writing the piece that I not only told him was written by Ben Goldstein, but also was signed with Ben’s initials. Today I’m here to respond to that open letter. If this isn’t of any interest to you, move along, there’s nothing to see here.

****************************************************************

Dear Representative Steve Hickey,

(‘Don’t even come in here with your faulty premises and negative proof fallacies, dude.  Just don’t.’)

In a response to B.J. Penn’s request for the Nevada State Athletic Commission to investigate Georges St. Pierre’s use of Vaseline in their main event bout at UFC 94, the Jackson camp has fired back with an exhaustive argument refuting any accusation of wrongdoing.  

As reported by Sherdog and the L.A. Times (which has a PDF of the full response), the Jackson camp provided seventeen pages of documents explaining what happened, why it wasn’t an intentional attempt to cheat, and why it had no bearing on Penn getting his ass handed to him.

A statement signed by Greg Jackson and Phil Nurse details the breathing technique used on St. Pierre between rounds and insists that video evidence shows only a “scant amount of Vaseline” ever found its way to GSP’s body.  It also lays out four recommendations for improving the NSAC’s policies to avoid the greasing question in the future, including wiping down fighters before every round and using a “touch test” to see if they are unnaturally greasy.  And of course they conclude by referring to Penn’s griping as “a desperate attempt to protect [Penn’s] reputation and commercial value after being totally dominated by a superior athlete.”

Oh.  Snap.