Brooke Mayo Feels Women Are Treated Differently By MMA Referees

Brooke Mayo made her professional MMA debut at Bellator 172, where she suffered a third round TKO loss to Veta Arteaga.

Mayo suffered the loss due to a swelling on her eye, which was cause enough for the doctor sitting at cage side to say she couldn’t continue to fight. The female debutante feels that is she were a he, the doctor wouldn’t have stopped the fight.

“I’m still going to be upset about it,” Mayo said to MMA Junkie. ” … I’ve watched MMA for a while now, and I’ve watched other fights. And even in the (Bellator 172) prelims, I saw my friend, and his eye got completely cut open in the same area as my eye, and he ended up getting a bunch of stitches and all that, and they let him continue to fight. So I just feel as if – this is just my opinion and, not trying to bash anybody or to blame anybody, but I just feel as women we’re kind of treated differently. And would you have done that to a man? Like, would you have done that to (Matt) Mitrione (who fought through a broken orbital bone at UFC Fight Night 81)?”

The women competed on the Bellator 172 main card, which was a shock to many, considering they had a total of two professional MMA fights between them heading into the event.

Controversial loss aside, Mayo feels she got a lot of respect from the MMA community that night.

“Even though it wasn’t what I wanted, at least I got respect, and fans, people that want to see more,” Mayo said. “So overall (it was) completely positive, I think we proved a lot of people wrong, on both sides.”

Mayo earned five wins as an amateur MMA fighter, with two of those wins coming in the Global Knockout promotion.