Ultimate Fighting Championship

Male vs. Female fight booked at Brazil MMA event

Published Dec. 17, 2013 8:14 p.m. ET

foxsports

Shooto must be Portuguese for "freak show."

The Brazilian MMA organization plans on holding the first-ever man vs. woman professional fight this weekend in Rio de Janeiro. The promotion announced the bantamweight bout Tuesday and promoted it heavily on social media.

The competitors will be Emerson Falcao and Juliana Velasquez, who is making her pro MMA debut. At least she can only go up from this circus. To think people were up in arms about Fallon Fox fighting.

Shooto is making Elite XC look like it had the utmost integrity when it pushed Kimbo Slice to the moon. This comes on the heels of a fighter dying before weigh-ins back in September.

Falcao, who fights out of Nova Uniao with the likes of Jose Aldo and Renan Barao, posted to his Facebook that he wouldn't be able to compete until next year due to injury. But now he's being promoted as being on Friday night's show, booked against Velasquez, a judoka out of Team Nogueira.

Velasquez told MMAFighting.com that it was the idea of Shooto president and Nova Uniao trainer Andre Pederneiras to hold this bout. He asked Team Nogueira for a female fighter, she said.

"I'm used to training with man every day," she said. "I'm a professional judoka and I know the adrenaline of the competition, I know how to handle this."

It might not actually happen, especially if logic and reason prevail. Osiris Maia, a member of the entity responsible for regulating Shooto events, told MMAFighting.com that no rules specifically prohibit a man from fighting a woman -- but they do prevent two people who are not of the same level being put together in a bout.

"So there's no way a man should be able to fight a woman," he said.

Accurate statement. Why is he the only one involved actually saying that?

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