BeardGate: Why are fighters required to trim their beards?

“There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard,” wrote French poet and novelist Jean Cocteau.
For UFC welterweight newcomer Emil Meek, that period came unexpectedly and without warning, almost traumatically. He sojourned through the ordeal, but not without the scars and a story to tell.
When Meek showed up on that December Friday morning in Toronto to weigh-in for his eventual UFC 206 bout opposite Jordan M