Hmmm. Why am I, an orthopedic spinal surgeon, against soccer kicks to the head of a grounded opponent? I’ll attempt to refrain from excessive personal comment and simply state that the risk of significant catastrophic injury is far too great.

Broken necks (cervical spine fractures) can easily injure the spinal cord and cause permanent paralysis and, in some cases, death. Depending on the positioning of the head at impact, direction and magnitude (vector) of the blow, the neck will break (fracture) at roughly 800 to 1,000 foot-pound force (preferred unit is Newtons (N) but I will not bore you with the math).

The average casual adult soccer player can kick a ball with 1,000 foot-pound force. The average professional soccer player can kick at about 1,200 foot-pound force. My educated guess is that an elite, highly trained MMA artist will perform very similar to the professional soccer player.

As we can see, the MMA athlete can very easily generate more than enough force to cause a very significant injury (specifically cervical spine fracture) to a grounded opponent. If the neck luckily is not broken with this crude, unskilled maneuver, the trachea (wind pipe) and carotid artery also lie directly in harm’s way; significant trauma to either can be permanently life-altering.

The rationale that it is safe because it has been done before and no one got hurt is faulty on many levels. Just because you may be unaware of anyone being injured doesn’t prove that the act is safe. It could merely mean that you are not well-informed, poor documentation was gathered, or we’re just lucky no one has been seriously injured yet.

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