Finally got to see the Carano vs. Cyborg fight from the Strikeforce show from this past weekend.

No question, Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos dominated that fight. She was aggressive, threw and landed more and better punches, had the ground game, submissions. She was just all over it. I think maybe for a few seconds Carano may have had the upper hand, but any judge watching the fight would have easily scored the round for Cyborg. Any that scored for Carano could only be voting based on beauty.

That’s the thing that I have to wonder about Carano. She’s pretty, and consequently she’s been dubbed “The Face of Women’s MMA”. She gets to doing so many other things, from appearances, to TV shows, or whatever… any time doing those other things, that’s time not training. I honestly don’t know what her training was like up to this fight, but I can’t help but wonder if non-training-related activities cut into training. I also can’t help but wonder if that added a little extra motivation to Cyborg, to want to ensure to beat Carano in a decisive way. Motivation or not, IMHO it was a decisive win for Cyborg.

But some will say the ending of the fight isn’t decisive. Yes, Carano was covering up, but she was not truly defending herself. From what I could see from the camera angle, which certainly wasn’t as good as the ref’s vantage point, it looked like Cyborg’s punches were breaking through Carano’s arms and landing on her face. Carano was getting a lot of hits to the head, she wasn’t actively improving her position, and the ref did the right thing to stop the fight to avoid any serious injury to Carano. If it had gone one second longer and the bell ended it, I’m pretty sure Cyborg would still have won and probably in round 2. Carano was dazed enough from all those punches at the end, then walk back into round 2 not only with the shots landed but probably some mental/emotional dejection because she was dominated that entire first round. I feel safe in saying that Cyborg would have eventually won.

Nevertheless, the 4:59 that it did go for was exciting. The crowd was hot, the fighters worked hard. Congratulations to Cristiane Santos.