That stuff does not wipe off, and St. Pierre fought round two without even being toweled off. This is the round where the grease could have given the most unfair advantage.

Maybe it is just me, but the vaseling could have had an effect Penn’s confidence. To me Penn seemed to look defeated after his high guard was pretty much rendered ineffective.

I’ve wrestled someone who that had baby oil applied to their body prior to a wrestling match. I was just too busy to say anything about it. I still won, but it reduced my effectiveness considerably.

Knowing this, I found this story disheartening even more so that recent steroid scandals. I just want to see a good fight.

I had also read of the posibility of the fight being ruled a no contest. I would be fine with that, so long as there was a rematch. However, I’m sure there was a lot of money changing hands through betting, so I’m not sure how that would play out.

Overall a investigation should commence, any pentalties should be applied, all involved should get a chance at redemption, and this too will pass. A permanent ban from cornering is a little stiff.

Maybe we need better science on greasy fighters, and random grease testing by the NSAC during training periods as well as before and after fights, particularly belt matches.

However, amongst the fan base, this is definitely hurting Penn. People don’t like fighters who make excuses; and while Penn may have a legitimate concern about the practices in GSP’s corner, the complaint just doesn’t provide any sort of redemption in the face of BJ’s crushing loss.

Perhaps the state athletic commission rules should be laid out more clearly. Maybe we should only allow a cornerman to touch the face of his fighter if he/she is using Vaseline. Or let’s just not use Vaseline at all once a fight begins.

If Luke had said, “Look, Zach, you are clinging for dear life on a non-issue. Nobody cares, the commission doesn’t care anymore, it is over.” Instead, it was yet another Luke Thomas to the rescue to defend his good name when nobody really cares.

I’ll address Luke clearly out in the open; you seem like a decent dude and your love for MMA is a great thing, but really? You need to lighten up when it comes to this stuff. People are going to attack you, people are going to misread you, people are going to discredit you. Finding each and every one and trying to create a public scene makes you come off like a nutjob.

“The newest canard being bandied about is that St. Pierre’s corner rubbed Vaseline on his back and shoulders between rounds and that the Vaseline constitutes ‘cheating’ on the part of St. Pierre’s team (notice that no one is saying it changed the outcome of the fight).”

It’s not a canard. It’s a legitimate news story, and you acknowledged that in the very next line:

“The charge is true in that the corner clearly committed wrongdoing, but it’s not the least bit clear how much Vaseline was used nor how much it impacted the fight.”

As a whole, that paragraph sent mixed messages and it was not made entirely clear what you were saying.

Fan Futbol— In response to this: “So, while I see what you’re saying about what COULD have happened…but what do you actually think did happend?”

I don’t know for sure which of the scenarios that you described is the way it was, and that’s the whole point in a way. None of us know for sure whether it gave St. Pierre an unfair advantage in Round 2.

Based on the irrefutable facts of the case (cornerman’s hand rubbing St. Pierre’s back immediately after rubbing his face before Round 2, athletic commission not cleaning off St. Pierre’s back until after Round 2, etc.), all we do know for sure is that it COULD have given St. Pierre an unfair advantage in that round.

It takes willful disregard of the facts to believe that St. Pierre there is zero chance that St. Pierre COULD have had any kind of unfair advantage in Round 2.

However, the bigger point of my previous post was that when regulations are broken or something improper happens, it doesn’t need to have affected the outcome of a fight for it to be a serious matter.

Again, they are two different scenarios, but the stand-up agreement in the Petruzelli/Slice fight had absolutely zero impact on the outcome of the fight. But I was all over the story, and so were most people, and the fact that the stand-up agreement had zero impact on the outcome of the fight wasn’t going to change that, because something improper still occurred.

If someone had said, “It didn’t affect the outcome of the fight, so it’s a non-issue that we should all stop talking about!” they would have been laughed off the forums. If someone had suggested that the people writing about this or pressing for further investigation should stop what they’re doing because they’re hurting the sport, that would have been even more ridiculous.

And yet both of these things have happened on multiple sites with the St. Pierre vaseline incidents.

Somehow, the false argument has been created that if one can successfully argue that the vaseline definitely had no impact on the fight, then that makes it a non-story.

Well, that wouldn’t make it a non-story. Something improper still happened, and it’s still a big deal.