Greasing allegations are a weird thing in MMA. We know it’s happened before, with notable accusations being leveled at Yoshihiro Akiyama (resulting in his Sakuraba fight being changed to a no contest) and of course, GSP’s infamous grease-gate, where one of the welterweight champions cornermen could be seen rubbing petroleum jelly into his skin between rounds in his second fight with B.J. Penn. And yet, allegations have always been more numerous than actual proven cases of cheating.
Often it comes up when a submission hunting fighter fails to get the submissions he’s searching for in a loss. Like when Rousimar Palhares complained that Nate Marquardt was slippery during their 2010 bout. It is a little unusual, however to hear it come up in a submission win, but that seems to be what’s on Tamdan McCrory’s mind after his submission over Josh Samman at UFC on Fox 17 in Orlando, Florida on December 19th.
“I wish I could have landed some cleaner shots,” McCrory said about the stoppage win over Samman. “I wish I’d felt a little better and crushed him better than I did. But, he got in that scramble and I knew, soon as I locked up that… I was working on the right arm, caught the left arm, put him in the triangle. He was defending that rather well, and plus it was slippin’ a little bit. And man, he was oily. I don’t know what that kid put in his skin, but he was sliding right back out on me, trust me…”
Samman responded to the allegations that he put something “in his skin” in a statement to Bloody Elbow (where, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll mention that he is also a contributor):
“I’m not sure if he was making a joke or really insinuating that I put something on before the fight. I hope he doesn’t think that. I’ve never been a cheater. USADA can come up with a skin oil test before my next fight and I will pass that too.”
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