Michael Rome over at BloodyElbow.com has a piece rounding up all the quotes that have been blurbed by various people involved on EliteXC and the commission's end of the Young vs. Carano fight as well as some quotes from Young herself. Head over to BloodyElbow for the complete lowdown on the quotes, but I'll summarize.

Kaitlin stated that she never had an open wound, and that Dr. Sherry Wulkan cleared her to fight. In the end, she said the commission simply said “No” to continuing the fight. She went on to say it would have likely broke open in the third, but she believes that CBS didn't want to have a bloody face of a woman blasted on television.

Wulkan emailed Sam Caplan with a different explanation. In short, she said that in the locker room after looking in the mirror, Young said she was glad the fight was stopped. Wulkan believes that Young was mad about being shunned from having a post-fight interview or being invited to do so.

Young reiterated later her original story and that she was simply never told about the interviews or after party. Gina Carano, in fact, invited her and gave her tickets.

So, what's all the arguing about? Did Young have a chance to continue, and should she have been allowed to continue? The placement of the bruising suggested an orbital fracture, and it isn't out of the realm of possibility that the bruising led to the stoppage.

Would Kaitlin Young have actually won? Probably not. That isn't the entire point though. Fighters should always be given a chance to win a bout no matter how dominating their opponent is in the matchup. Carano was faster, bigger, and had a tired Young on the ropes of losing. We can't assume that the outcome would have been Carano winning, but in my mind, it was a safe bet after two rounds. Kaitlin wasn't quicker in any of the striking during the fight, and it was actually impressive to see Carano overcome the hype that Kaitlin Young had been given leading up to the fight.

In the end, I believe the stoppage was justified. Her face was mincemeat, she was clearly losing the fight, and it didn't look good for her in continuing the fight with Carano being so crushing in the standup. Should those be reasons to stop the fight? No, they shouldn't. There were no open wounds according to Young, and they were not placed in positions to allow for blood to blur her vision.

We can argue all day whether or not she should have been allowed to continue, but Carano won the fight. She was dominating the standup for two rounds, and Kaitlin didn't have the quickness to catch Carano. Regardless, I suppose Kaitlin should have been given the opportunity, and the commission and Dr. Shelly Wulkan disappointed us with that decision. The fact is that MMA doesn't have portable x-ray machines out in the cage to make split second decisions. Let's move on.

Photo courtesy of BloodyElbow.com