When do we throw in the towel for fighters who won't – or can't – quit?

(A condensed version of this story appears in today’s edition of USA TODAY.)

A little more than 48 hours after taking what looked to be a terrible beating at the hands of Jessica Andrade (10-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC), 36-year-old UFC fighter Rosi Sexton (13-4 MMA, 0-2 UFC) was feeling just fine, thank you very much.

“I’ve got a couple of black eyes,” Sexton, who suffered a unanimous decision defeat, told USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com on Monday. “But other than that, no real problems.”

So why then did so many observers, from fans and media to UFC President Dana White himself, find themselves simmering with a barely contained rage after the fight continued for three full rounds at UFC Fight Night 30 in Manchester, England, on Saturday night?

“I agree 100 percent that fight should have been stopped,” White said after the event, comparing it to the UFC heavyweight title fight one week prior in which champion Cain Velasquez battered challenger Junior dos Santos well into the fifth round.

After fights like that, White added, “what we should do is bring the ref out in the hallway and let someone punch him in the face for 15 minutes, and nobody jump in to help him, just to see what it feels like.”

While there are no doubt those who feel such an exercise could only improve MMA officiating in the long run, it still doesn’t help us answer some difficult questions about when enough is enough for a fighter on the wrong side of a one-sided bout.

Collapse to the mat after one big blow, and it’s an easy call. Turtle up and wait for the stoppage, and still we have little trouble being sure that the fight is probably over. But what about fighters like Sexton or dos Santos or even Diego Sanchez, who also took his share of punishment at UFC 166 in Houston? What should we do about a fighter who’s too tough to drop or quit, but too hurt to launch much of an offense in service of his or her own cause?

Some would say that’s when it becomes the responsibility of the fighter’s corner to stop it, but that’s problematic in itself, according to world-renowned trainer Greg Jackson.

“There’s no golden rule,” Jackson said. “You can’t say in every instance where your fighter is taking a beating it should be stopped, because fights do turn around sometimes. I am reluctant to throw towels in just for that very reason. If it’s that bad of a beating, I think that’s the referee’s job.”

Longtime MMA ref “Big” John McCarthy doesn’t necessarily disagree.

“It all comes down to you having compassion for the fighter and enough backbone to stand up to the people who will say you screwed the fighter,” McCarthy wrote in a text message on Monday. ” … No one deserves the right to finish a fight. They earn it through their actions in being competitive. A ref needs to understand the difference between fighting and surviving. Sometimes we need to protect fighters from themselves as much as their opponent.”

The trouble, of course, is in knowing when to take that step. Take Sexton’s situation, for example. While it may have looked bad, she said, she feels that the damage she took was mostly cosmetic.

“It’s difficult to tell from the outside because things can look worse than they are,” Sexton said. “Or sometimes you take a shot that doesn’t look like much, but because of the way it lands or where it lands, it has a big impact. In a similar way, you can take some shots that look bad or do superficial damage, but don’t have that same concussive effect. I think that was the case here. I still felt pretty coherent by the end of the fight. I’ve had better days, but I was still there.”

But the more we learn about the lasting effects of head trauma in sports, the more we have to consider that it might not be a simple matter of asking a fighter how she feels immediately after the fight. Hits that seem benign now could exact a heavy toll later on. Pain begets pain in this business.

“It’s an issue in the sport generally, and it’s something to be aware of, but I think most people come at it from the wrong place,” Sexton said. “For starters, most of the damage the fighters do to themselves is not in the fight, but in sparring year in, year out.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Jackson, who said he’s seen the changes in training philosophy in his own gym over the years. These days, Jackson said, if a fighter gets knocked out “we don’t even want to see you in the gym,” often for a month or more.

Back in MMA’s hardcore early days, he said, few fighters were so cautious.

“That’s why I worry about the earlier generation of fighters,” Jackson said. “I think we’re getting smarter about that stuff now, but the early generation, when we would just spar and fight with severe concussions. That was just what you did. It’s like smoking before you knew it caused cancer.”

Now we know what repeated hits to the head can do to the brain. We just don’t seem to know exactly where to draw the line in a sport that already carries some inherent risk.

The way Jackson sees it, those calling for bouts to be stopped when one fighter starts absorbing too much punishment don’t always realize what they’re asking.

“Whether it’s press or fans or promoters, you know, it’s a lot different when you’re actually in the trenches,” Jackson said. “You can fall into a trap … where you’re writing about things beyond the scope of your experience. It’s a more complicated situation than just, this guy’s taking a beating and it needs to stop. I would say that the people on the outside saying we should stop this, they don’t know what it’s like to have that relationship with a fighter. There are a lot of factors that seem very simple to the people who don’t have to deal with the aftermath of that position.”

For instance, Jackson said, when a trainer throws the towel in, what message has he just sent to his fighter?

“You can say, ‘I did this for the longevity of your career,’ but what you’re really saying is that there was no way they were going to win that fight,” Jackson said. “That brings up belief issues. Morale is a big thing when you’re training fighters.”

That’s something that hit a nerve with Sexton, she said, when she saw fans on Twitter criticizing her coaches for allowing her to continue against Andrade.

“My corner was getting flak for not stopping the fight, and I don’t think that was fair,” Sexton said. “I think everyone involved made the right decisions. My corner, they know me. If there had been something wrong, they’d have stopped it.”

The fact that they didn’t actually makes the loss easier to deal with, Sexton said, “because now there aren’t any question marks over it. I don’t have to wonder what would have happened in that [third] round.”

Sexton also believes there might be another variable in this particular situation since hers was a women’s bout, and some fans seem to have a harder time watching two females put themselves through the same rigors that the men are applauded for.

“I think people are more sensitive to it with women,” Sexton said. “If that same fight had happened with two males, I don’t think it would have generated those same remarks.”

Of course, many people did level the same criticisms at the prior weekend’s Velasquez-dos Santos bout. They’re the kind of concerns that seem easy for fighters to shrug off, since what do these people know about going to war in a cage, anyway?

And yet, can’t they at least acknowledge that it comes from a well-intentioned place? Do they realize that, at least in most cases, fans want to see the fight stopped not out of a callous disregard for the fighter’s sacrifices, but because they do care, and because they don’t want to see MMA fighters suffer the same fate as so many aging boxers and football players?

Sure, Jackson said, that is reassuring, not to mention a helpful moderating force in the sport.

“Certainly I think it’s great that people are talking in those terms, that maybe we should really be thinking about concussion issues and the longevity and health of the fighter if they’re just standing there and going at it,” Jackson said. “I think that’s great, but it’s not like in other sports where it’s black and white.”

On that point, most people seem to agree. In a combat sport that’s dangerous by its very nature, there are many shades of gray. But how do we decide when they’ve gotten too dark, and when we’ve crossed the line from acceptable risk to reckless disregard for the health and safety of the very people who drive the sport?

“That’s a very difficult question,” Sexton said. “I’m not sure I’ve got an answer to that.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 30, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

(Pictured: Rosi Sexton, bottom, fighting Alexis Davis at UFC 161)