Ben Rothwell beat Alistair Overeem at UFN 50 on Saturday, but in an interview with Australia’s awesome Submission Radio, the heavyweight was a sore winner, pointedly complaining about Overeem’s oblique kicks to the knee.
Overeem is now a member of Jackson/Winkeljohn MMA. Coach Mike Winkeljohn held world titles in Muay Thai and kickboxing, but is also a 5th degree black belt in Kenpo karate, a self-defense oriented system that he learned under Bill Packer. Kenpo employs many kicks to the knee, and Jackson/Winkeljohn fighters including UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones have used them in fights.
Below Jones demonstrates the attack.
In response, several fighters including Rampage Jackson and Rashad Evans have called for the kick to be banned, calling it a “dirty” technique. Rothwell agrees.
“I almost yelled at him in the fight,” said Rothwell as transcribed by MMAMania. “He was doing some real dirty push kicks to my knee, and it’s just a dirty move. It’s not honorable in my mind because this isn’t street fighting. Like street fighting, if you’re fighting in the street, I’m undefeated. And I will remain so, and if I’m not, it means I’m dead. If you want to fight like that, then I’m going to start. I’m gonna rip his eyes out, I’m gonna pull his jugular out with my teeth, and I’m gonna break things on him. I’m gonna start snapping fingers and it’ll be a lot worse on him. And throwing push kicks at the knee joint is kinda like, to me it’s the same dirty message. It’s like you don’t do that, and I almost said something to him during the fight like ‘really?’ like ‘you’re gonna play like that?’ and I luckily ended him before he got to do it anymore.”
The issue with oblique kicks is not so much that they are dirty, as that they are new. Submissions in professional MMA are not applied to get a tap as they are by rule in grappling and BJJ, they are applied to break the joint. There is nothing inherently different between try to injure a joint with a joint lock, and trying to injure it with a kick.
MMA is a hurting game and Jackson and WInkeljohn are brilliant coaches. What Overeem did was very much within the rules, and acceptable. Whether oblique kicks are high percentage attacks is another question. One of Overeem’s conventional kicks landed so hard it caused severe swelling and nerve damage to Rothwell’s blocking arn, leading him to believe it was broken. So perhaps ‘Reem should have been low, middle, and high kicking more. Or perhaps Rothwell blocked the kick wrong as he was worried about the awkward oblique kicks.
The great thing about mixed martial arts is that time will tell. More fighters will follow Winkeljohn’s lead and use the oblique kick. In time, its effectiveness will be determined, and it will be regarded as no less dirty than hitting a man when he is down.
