If you had wondered what that might have looked like had the referee not done such a good job of protecting the competitors, the answer is:
like this
That is Valentina Shevchenko beating the living shit out of Prisicla Cachoeira in the second round of their UFC Flyweight contest in Belém last night. That picture isn't even the end of the fight. It kept going for about 30 seconds after that with no intervention from the referee.
The fight should not have been made in the first place, Shevchenko is one of the best female fighters in the world and Cachoeira was a UFC debutante, but even then it was worse than it needed to be. I think commentator Paul Felder was a touch dramatic in saying the fight could have been stopped in the first round, because Cachoeira was still intelligently (if not very effectively) defending herself as Shevchenko sat in her guard mauling her like Khabib Nurmagomedov's female alter ego. The second round, though, should not have lasted four and a half minutes. Cachoeira spent over a minute of it trapped underneath Shevchenko in a crucifix getting punched and elbowed in the head with no ability to prevent it or to escape. The referee (Mario Yamasaki, who has a track record of late stoppages) allowed Cachoeira to take her beating until Shevchenko gave up on hitting her and started choking her instead.
The significant strike differential ended up at a staggering 93 (95 Shevchenko 2 Cachoeira) which is just ludicrous for a two round fight. It's short of Joanna Violence's all time SSD record of 142 (225 Violence 83 Andrade) but that was a five round thrashing, albeit against a much better opponent. This was just under ten minutes long.
I have two particular thoughts on this - besides the obvious. Firstly, many female fighters have complained that referees are more likely to stop their contests than they are men's fights because (they allege) of some belief that women shouldn't be allowed to get hurt as much. There is merit to this. The general response to this from the mostly male mma community has been far worse than for last year's incident in which Yamasaki allowed heavyweight Derrick Lewis to land three or four heavy blows on an already unconscious Travis Browne - which was far worse in potential damage than almost anything that could have happened in last night's fight. Sexism in sport could really have a whole thread, but in this particular dimension it seems plausible that a conscious or subconscious prejudice is at play. Men don't mind seeing fellow men getting beaten up nearly as much as we mind seeing women getting beaten up, at least in general.
Secondly, people need to get off Shevchenko's proverbial dick about this. She won, yes, and dominated, but it was against a hopelessly outmatched opponent. People were talking about the rest of the division ducking her and rivals Amanda Nunes and J-Violence delaying or revising any plans they had to fight her when they saw what was going on. It's nonsense. This victory has no relevance to the context of the elite female fighters. While I can understand why Shevchenko took the fight (to get paid and post a win in her new division) she was bayoneting a sack of straw and she knows it.