Darina vs Goliath: Watch a woman face a 529 lb man in Russian MMA bout

MMA continues to be both a place for elite athletes to ply their trade by utilizing combat proficiency and applying technique for all to see. It also remains the most acceptable niche for wild circus fights and breathtakingly bad ideas when it comes to violence potential.

Perhaps it’s the unpredictable nature of the sport, the reality of countless possible factors and outcomes in any given scenario. Maybe it’s something of a novelty as the sport has gained popularity and acceptance, leading to people wanting to see weirder and weirder things happen in a cage.

One thing is for sure, you’re always going to find people down to rumble in the worst ways possible.

This week brings us to Russia, where Darina Madzyuk fought Grigory Chistyakov at the Our Business event. Usually, any Man vs Woman event will be guaranteed to court controversy. The kicker? Darina weighed in at 139lbs, while Chistyakov came in at 529lbs. The freakshow bout got ugly with Chistyakov having no reservations about punching a woman, but Darina was not about to just roll over on this one.

The action was captured and memorialized by the one and only Caposa.

After pressing her against the cage, Chistyakov seemed to have run out of answers, and after being separated and making their way to the center of the cage, the tables were turned. Madzyuk started throwing hands and Chistyakov appeared to be clueless on defense. After getting hit and falling forward, he basically stayed there while Madzyuk kept spamming punches to the head, forcing the ref to stop the bout.

Afterwards, they all posed for this photo in which it appeared they had just hunted down and slain an exotic rhino. At least Chistyakov seemed to have had a good attitude about it.

Clearly clueless in many aspects of MMA, Chistyakov really didn’t do much of anything in this bout. All credit to Madzyuk, she performed admirably, overcame a bit of difficulty against a much larger (almost 400lbs larger) opponent and came out on top.

It’s difficult to make much of this, as the optics really aren’t good at all. At least in this case the underdog won, sparing us from something far worse in the end.

Madzyuk is only 28 years old, and could very easily be signed by some other more organization or be offered other opportunities from the notoriety she’s earned here. As for Chistyakov, he claims he now wants to train in a serious manner and claims he wants Madzyuk to coach him.

Good luck to him on that, he’s gonna need it. But there’s also no doubt Madzyuk could be just what he needs in a trainer to keep him focused and on the path to improvement.