ONE FC have moved swiftly to rework their soccer kick rule to ensure they won’t have to worry about enciting the kind of controversy we saw at the weekend during Andrei Arlovski and Tim Sylvia’s fight.
After flooring Sylvia with punches Arlovski looked to finish him off with soccer kicks to the head – something that’s illegal in many MMA promotions around the globe, but legal under ONE FC rules.
There’s one caveat however – that the fighter is supposed to wait until the referee gives the signal before instigating that form of attack and since Arlovski didn’t and Sylvia was left unable to continue, the fight was declared a no-contest.
It was far from an ideal ruling and given that this method of attack has quickly become popular within the Asian promotion they’ve made a sensible decision to rewrite the rule so that fighter’s don’t have to wait for the referee’s signal before attacking with the technique.
That’ll come as no consolation to Arlovski who had initially celebrated in the cage after the fight, unaware that he had done something illegal. Later both Arlovski and Sylvia verbally agreed to a fifth fight to once and for all settle the score between them, though ‘The Pitbull’ has since claimed a moral victory and says the bad blood between him and his former UFC nemesis has now ended.
