MMA fighter Nick Diaz, just moments before Stile operates on his face.

For a time, Diaz looked like, in Stile's words, "Frankenstein's monster" while they waited to see if the pledget would absorb and reduce his brow line.

Eventually, it did. "There was a very steep learning curve for both of us," Stile says. "Fortunately, it worked."

At the time of the surgery, Diaz's ring efficacy was questionable. Today, he's the welterweight champion of Strikeforce, the No. 2 MMA outfit behind the UFC.

Diaz mentioned the surgery to former UFC welterweight Marcus Davis, who had been stitched at least 70 times in his career. He soon became Stile's second patient, and can now wrestle with his son without fear of a collision opening up his flimsy brow.

The Ethics of Surgical Fixes

Stile sees the surgery as corrective, not enhancing. He's merely trying to undo the damage done by a progressive series of inept sutures: "You should see the shit I take out of people's faces. Some people have silk sutures, which veterinarians don't even use anymore."

Now that word has spread, pro fighters who've been cut have trekked to Stile's Vegas office specifically to have stitches pulled in hope of a fresh start.

But Stile also asserts the new skin might indeed be as good as that of someone who had never been cut at all. And if a fighter with "virgin skin" meets another with a Krazy Glued brow, who stands the better chance?

Ask bioethicist Andy Miah, Director of the Creative Futures Research Centre at the University of the West of Scotland about Matheson's vision of a superfighter, and he'll tell you that the idea of corrupting sport or human performance is a ship that's long since sailed.

"We crossed that line many decades ago with the discovery of penicillin or anesthesia, then with the boon in cosmetic and functional surgeries," he said. "Sports will follow, and fighting will lead the way."

‘If you tell an athlete, "hey, you can have one more surgery that's going to enable you to extend your career five years," I think a significant portion would agree to something like that.'

The speculation involves muscle transfers, which could see a surgeon taking a quadriceps muscle and inserting it into the biceps.

Adding stiffness - incidentally, that could be scar tissue - to a joint like an ankle or elbow could make an MMA fighter less susceptible to submissions. Cartilage around the trachea could be reinforced to make someone less likely to tap from a rear-naked choke. And why not insert some silicone around the jawline to make a knockout blow harder to inflict?

If that seems too extreme, then what about Tiger Woods getting Lasik eye surgery and winning seven of his next 10 tournaments with new-found 20/15 vision? Then there's tennis player Simona Halep, who had breast-reduction surgery to help alleviate back pain during her time on the court. And don't forget Gary Sheffield, then-outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, had to be talked out of Lasik by his doctor even though he had better than 20/20 vision.

When your life is tied up in how well your body performs, you will take any and every measure available.

"A lot of the athletes I take care of now, they've had 10 or 15 surgeries," says Matthew Matava, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

"If you tell an athlete, ‘Hey, you can have one more surgery that's going to enable you to extend your career five years,' I think a significant portion would agree to something like that. But hopefully, whatever the procedure is, there's going to be peer-reviewed evidence that it does work."

Stile's techniques are undergoing that kind of scrutiny now, as surgeons from New York University are working with him to publish results in a future issue of Annals of Plastic Surgery.

But as with steroids, the number of athletes willing to take big risks creates a new kind of normal: Athletes might one day have to consent to surgery just to be at parity.

"It may mean that the athlete who hasn't gone through the intervention will no longer be competitive and even be forced into retirement or compelled to enhance," Miah says. "Should we care about that? I don't think so. It's a tough world. If you want to be an elite athlete today, you have to make sacrifices."

Is the Era of the Natural Human Ending?

The imminent risk inherent in Frank Stile's procedure is the potential for misadventure - namely, someone other than Stile performing it.

Brazilian UFC middleweight Wanderlei Silva disappeared for a period in 2009 before re-emerging looking like one of the Real Housewives of Sao Paulo, a look that's softened only slightly in the time since.

"Brows in males should remain in a neutral position," Stile says. "You do an incision like this in males, you have to be careful you limit your skin excision to the scar only. If you take out too much skin in addition to the scar, when you close it, it raises the eyebrow, which gives you a feminine, catlike appearance."

Stile is now looking into how MRI and CT scan technology might give some indication of a fighter being more prone to cuts, thanks to those sharp ridges of the skull. There's also the potential to shave down the zygomatic (cheekbone) region, another area likely to cut.

As for Stile's test case, Nick Diaz finally got his rematch with K.J. Noons after three grueling years. Stile watched proudly as Diaz went the five-round distance, getting several cuts without much blood loss - and coming out with a long-awaited victory.

Eventually, Stile might have new answers for nasal issues: UFC veteran Phil Baroni had Stile reshape a nose already several times broken, allowing him to breathe more easily and keep his jaw from hanging open to get air.

"Phil had a deviated septum, which was the main impetus for the surgery, but we also did cosmetic changes," Stile recalls. "His nose became a little more refined and we took some of the irregularities out of the bridge. I think nasal reconstruction will become a huge thing."

It won't be tomorrow, or next year, but eventually athletic commissions across the United States will need to determine the validity of using surgery to improve performance. TheAssociation of Boxing Commissions is investigating the issue in its medical committee, which may issue a report this summer.

"The era of the natural human is slowly coming to an end, both biologically and ideologically," Andy Miah says.

One of the faces of this new paradigm is Oscar Pistorius, the bionic Paralympian with artificial legs. "If he is able to compete in the London 2012 Olympic Games - not just the Paralympic Games - this will signal a massive shift in what we think of as being ‘able-bodied.'

"Then, technology will have outpaced evolution. Quite literally."

Photos: Courtesy Frank Stile