Tag: UFC rules

Three Brutal Fighting Technique UFC Needs To Eliminate

It’s no doubt that the UFC has done a good job of keeping up with rules, regulations, sanctions and with the times of the tournament, but there are three old-school rules our gooner news publisher believed the promotion needs to eliminate. As every sport grows older, there would come the need for adaptations to keep […]

It’s no doubt that the UFC has done a good job of keeping up with rules, regulations, sanctions and with the times of the tournament, but there are three old-school rules our gooner news publisher believed the promotion needs to eliminate.

As every sport grows older, there would come the need for adaptations to keep up with the times. This means a number of things, including getting rid of old and outdated rules. The promotion has been around and be making rounds for more than 26 years and is considered to be the lead promotion in the MMA industry. However, the writer reckons the promotion seems to be guilty of living in the past in some instances, and in light of the above, here are the three rules the promotion needs to get rid of in order to stay ahead of the curve.

Technically, these rules and made and set by the state athletic commissions but with mounting pressure from the UFC, the hands of those commissions that set the rules could be forced to revisit and eliminating some of these rules.

In the meantime, the opening odds for the proposed summer bout between Conor McGregor vs. Justin Gaethje seems to be gathering momentum at the moment. And while it’s a known fact for many sports fans to bet on the live sport, whether it’s NJ online casinos or betting on a fight, the online entertainment sportsbook offers something for pretty much any sports section you might ever need. 

So here we go with the first on the list of the three deadly rules the UFC promotion ought to take down: 

3. The soccer kicks 

Some say they’re barbaric, others, however, make them the most-watched videos on the internet. A soccer kick is essentially a kick thrown by a standing fighter, against another who is down, kneeling, or staggering to get up. This technique is definitely controversial, but making them legal would add another weapon to a fighter’s arsenal. In a sport already known to be fuelled by adrenaline, the legalization of this would do nothing but brings less worry to any fighter’s mind about disqualification. This technique needs to be scrapped! 

2.  Knees to the head of a grounded opponent 

On this specific one, the outlines differ from commission to commission, and the “unified” rules seem to be anything but unified. Depending on where the bout is scheduled to take place, a fighter has to be aware of specific points about this rule, leading to mass confusion. Basically, as per gooner news publishing, what this rule says is that “if your opponent is considered grounded which in most places means has a knee or three points of his body on the mat, you cannot knee him.” 

The above rule, in my opinion, is nothing but a silly rule that oftentimes leads to controversy, chaos in the octagon between respective fighter teams, as we’ve seen recently in the Diego Sanchez vs. Michel Pereira fight, unfortunate finishes. The referees are there to protect the competitors, so I believe the promotion doing away with this rule altogether will suit all parties involved and if a fighter gets into a bad enough spot, the referee should be there to rescue him. 

1. The 12-6 elbows 

Arguably the worst rule in MMA today the UFC should eliminate. A fighter’s use of the 12-6 technique is essentially just a downward elbow striker. This practice was responsible for the disqualification and the lone loss on Jon Jones’ record. No one is really sure why the promotion is taking eyes off the use of this technique by some fighters in most bout, perhaps disqualification should also come with eye-watering fees for whosoever uses this on his opponent in the ring. If the UFC promotion wants to seem innovative and prove they really are a leader in the sport of MMA, then the use of 12-6 elbow has to go.

Enough’s Enough: UFC VP Marc Ratner to Request Changes to MMA’s Two Most Bullshit Rules


(I don’t see a downed opponent. I see a damn *fool*!)

It’s one of the strangest, most arbitrary double-standards of MMA’s Unified Rules — you get five minutes to recover from a strike to the groin, but if you can’t immediately continue after an eye-poke, the fight is over. Considering that the eyes are the balls of the face, it’s a shame that both sets of organs aren’t given equal protection under the law.

Gian Villante was the latest victim of the eye-poke technicality at UFC 159, when he lost a technical decision to Ovince St. Preux after getting gouged 33 seconds into the second round of their prelim scrap. As he explained afterwards, “I couldn’t see for a second. I just blinked my eye to try to get some fluid back in there. I would have been fine 30 seconds later. I thought I had five minutes. All I needed was 10 seconds. But they ended it…I don’t know what was I supposed to say. And if I did know what to say, I’m in the middle of a fight. I’m not going to think, ‘What is the exact rule on what to say when you get poked in the eye?’ I’m going to say exactly how I feel. I can’t see for this second, but give me a second, and I’ll be all right.”

Instead, referee Kevin Mulhall stopped the fight, and the judges scored the action up to that point, giving Villante a loss in his UFC debut. On the bright side, that disappointing moment might have been the last straw in the UFC’s tolerance for some of the sport’s most controversial rules. According to an MMAJunkie report, UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner will make a formal request to change MMA’s eye-poke protocol at the Association of Boxing Commissions’ annual conference in late July. (The ABC is responsible for maintaining the Unified Rules of MMA, and providing uniform standards for MMA among the state and tribal athletic commissions.)

As Ratner puts it:


(I don’t see a downed opponent. I see a damn *fool*!)

It’s one of the strangest, most arbitrary double-standards of MMA’s Unified Rules — you get five minutes to recover from a strike to the groin, but if you can’t immediately continue after an eye-poke, the fight is over. Considering that the eyes are the balls of the face, it’s a shame that both sets of organs aren’t given equal protection under the law.

Gian Villante was the latest victim of the eye-poke technicality at UFC 159, when he lost a technical decision to Ovince St. Preux after getting gouged 33 seconds into the second round of their prelim scrap. As he explained afterwards, “I couldn’t see for a second. I just blinked my eye to try to get some fluid back in there. I would have been fine 30 seconds later. I thought I had five minutes. All I needed was 10 seconds. But they ended it…I don’t know what was I supposed to say. And if I did know what to say, I’m in the middle of a fight. I’m not going to think, ‘What is the exact rule on what to say when you get poked in the eye?’ I’m going to say exactly how I feel. I can’t see for this second, but give me a second, and I’ll be all right.”

Instead, referee Kevin Mulhall stopped the fight, and the judges scored the action up to that point, giving Villante a loss in his UFC debut. On the bright side, that disappointing moment might have been the last straw in the UFC’s tolerance for some of the sport’s most controversial rules. According to an MMAJunkie report, UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner will make a formal request to change MMA’s eye-poke protocol at the Association of Boxing Commissions’ annual conference in late July. (The ABC is responsible for maintaining the Unified Rules of MMA, and providing uniform standards for MMA among the state and tribal athletic commissions.)

As Ratner puts it: “What we want the referees to do is don’t make a medical decision. Call time. Don’t ask the kid if he can see or not. Bring the doctor in and let the doctor make the determination…Now obviously, if any fighter can’t see, you want the fight stopped. But here’s a case where if you go through the mechanic and bring the doctor in, it will give them a chance to see if in fact the eye clears up and he can fight…I think by bringing the doctor in, just the whole operation will take a couple of minutes, and I think that should alleviate most of the pain and give us enough time to make sure the guy can fight.”

Alright, so it’s not as simple as “five minutes for eye-pokes too,” but the reasoning makes sense; give a fighter a chance to blink a few times before asking him if he can see, and let a doctor make the final decision about whether a match can continue.

Ratner also plans to propose a change to the definition of a “grounded opponent.” In the current incarnation of the Unified Rules, having a hand down on the mat gives a fighter “grounded” status, meaning that their opponent isn’t allowed to kick or knee them in the head. But fighters like Quinton Jackson and Paul Buentello have blatantly exploited this rule in the past, intentionally putting their hands on the mat to avoid trouble — and Ratner isn’t a fan of that either:

“We really believe this ‘three-point stance rule,’ where a fighter is just placing his hand on and off the mat so he won’t get hit, needs to be addressed. That’s not what the rule is for. That has to be looked at…If you’re going against the intent of the rule, and that’s what’s being done with some fighters, then we’ve got to change it.”

We wish Mr. Ratner luck in his quest to add a little bit of common sense to the Unified Rules. And once he has success with fixing the eye-poke and grounded-fighter rules, we hope he can help revise MMA’s other bad rules, like lifting the ban on 12-to-6 elbows, and prohibiting non-English-speaking fighters from taking us through the replay.

Are there any other MMA rules that you’d like to see changed?