On the Frequency of Accidental Fouls

[Mr Joyboy]

Low IQ posters like @Thepaintbucket and @EndlessCritic have actually accidentally strengthened my point. They recall fighters from the past who fouled a lot because they STOOD OUT for committing fouls in and era when they were less common. Who's the premier groin kicker now? Everyone. Jones gets focused on because of his fame and success, I suppose, but a lot of guys should be getting similar heat.

 

[Fight Professor]

The athletic commission does not seem to force referees to punish the offenders. That is ridiculous. We are not watching street fights and fighters can get long lasting damage.

 

[Fight Professor]

Low IQ posters like @Thepaintbucket and @EndlessCritic have actually accidentally strengthened my point. They recall fighters from the past who fouled a lot because they STOOD OUT for committing fouls in and era when they were less common. Who's the premier groin kicker now? Everyone. Jones gets focused on because of his fame and success, I suppose, but a lot of guys should be getting similar heat.

The big problem is not a specific fighter. It is the system that allows fouls to happen that frequently without any penalties.

 

[Jose Beehive]

Yoel punches dicks, and punches legs.

<Lmaoo>

 

[Thepaintbucket]

Low IQ posters like @Thepaintbucket and @EndlessCritic have actually accidentally strengthened my point. They recall fighters from the past who fouled a lot because they STOOD OUT for committing fouls in and era when they were less common. Who's the premier groin kicker now? Everyone. Jones gets focused on because of his fame and success, I suppose, but a lot of guys should be getting similar heat.

Umm do you have a statistical data set to go along with your theory or are you pretending to know the number of fouls over a time frame based on your own personal observation?

Until then please shut up

 

[Mr Joyboy]

Umm do you have a statistical data set to go along with your theory or are you pretending to know the number of fouls over a time frame based on your own personal observation?

Until then please shut up

I was up front about my thread being based on what I noticed from watching a certain volume of fights between eras, and many citizens of the forum are noticing the same thing.

Lol @ pulling the "ummm, source?" card here, fuck off back to reddit you punk.

 

[jx820]

There's an element that's strategic. Every fighter should logically start every fight with a groin strike and an eye poke. It's sure to pay dividends down the line. It almost certainly won't cost a point.

If the guy can't continue you get paid anyway, then call him a pussy and say he quit because he was scared of you and there's a ton of hype for a rematch like a month later. 2 paychecks for one camp.

There is pretty much no downside to landing one of each.

 

[Thepaintbucket]

I was up front about my thread being based on what I noticed from watching a certain volume of fights between eras, and many citizens of the forum are noticing the same thing.

Lol @ pulling the "ummm, source?" card here, fuck off back to reddit you punk.

How can you create a whole essay on your theory and then call someone low IQ when you failed to provide simple data to support your case.

Do you really think anybody will spend time to formulate a thoughtful counter argument when you failed to do so yourself? Use your brain next time.

Lol at trying to insult me with that reddit line.

Later

 

[ClosetVitorFan]

Solution:
Take points no matter if intentional or not.

I don't care if it was unintentional, the foul gives an advantage to one fighter and changes the fight dynamic. A taken point restores the balance. And it will force "foulers" to finish the fight if they want to win.

They used to do that, they used to say although unintentional, it was damaging, hence one point taken off, they stopped doing that and here we are, foul central. Every eye poke, even unintentional, if it’s damaging, which most of them are, one point taken regardless. No freebies, nut shots are a bit different, you’re given 5 minutes to recover, you wear a cup, you should be fine, unless it was a killer one. But yeah.

 

[Mr Joyboy]

How can you create a whole essay on your theory and then call someone low IQ when you failed to provide simple data to support your case.

Do you really think anybody will spend time to formulate a thoughtful counter argument when you failed to do so yourself? Use your brain next time.

Lol at trying to insult me with that reddit line.

Later

Tragically Low IQ.

My thread used words like "noticed", "seems", "I think", etc, and I avoided factual claims. This is a forum, it is conversational, it's not the Academic Journal of Human Cockfighting. I appreciate everyone's view, but you had to pay the price for violating my Inb4.

Saying someone needs to do a statistical study of a large number of fights and do all the measurements before starting a conversation is obvious bad faith. Shame on you.

And no, I don't expect a thoughtful answer from anyone, though thoughtful responses are appreciated, I expect everyone to give their take without holding a forum chat to an unreasonable standard. Go get some upvotes somewhere else.

Thanks for taking the L.

 

[khabib time]

The problem is it becomes a game both ways. If you punish people too hard it becomes a game to fake out the ref into thinking the leg kick hit your balls, and it becomes like soccer where guys fling themselves across the field and scream in pain.

Could you imagine giving Herb the green light to punish hard for fouls? Then he'd be making videos to support all the mistakes he would make getting faked out like the refs do in soccer.

 

[RightToBareKnuckles]

Dear Sherdog,

I've been watching through a lot of 2000-2008 era UFC, and I've noticed some things in regards to eye pokes and groin strikes.

1) Eye pokes were far, far, far less common in fights from this era. I admit I don't watch every fight nowadays, but it seems like there's an eye poke in every big fight I see, and people are always bringing up eye pokes that may have affected big fights on the forum. Likewise, referees are constantly admonishing fighters "watch those fingers", or "fingers up" in modern fights, while this never occurred during matches back then.

I theorize that it's a combination of fighters realizing they can get at least one free eye poke per fight without being penalized, and the effect of Jon Jones showing that using the threat of an eye poke is an effective way to control distance.

Additionally, jabbing may be more common now, and with more fighters thinking they know how to "flick the jab" with a relaxed hand instead of a proper closed fist, more loose fingers are going around the eyes. I feel like many fighters used more "fundamentals" in the old days, and as grapplers learned boxing they just always kept a closed fist when standing up.

2) Groin shots are also much more common. Here I think the explanation is simple; fighters are becoming more well rounded and therefore there's more leg kicks being thrown, naturally causing more nut shots.

BONUS QUESTION

I sort of always wondered why we see so few groin strikes from punches in MMA. I suppose body punches are less common in MMA than they are in boxing, but I still think it's odd that I can't think of a single example in MMA.

Inb4 Someone accuses me of saying fouls never happened in the old days. Of course they did, but seem to be significantly less common.

Love,
Mr Joyboy

regarding the few groin punches, i wonder if the smaller shorts compared to boxing make a difference? maybe not a big factor, but with the big, high-waisted boxing shorts someone might be trying to punch the gut, but since it's covered up the punch lands off target and hits the groin

 

[Kell Martin]

Plenty of good points here. I also want to add: how many times haven't we seen a ref yell to a pawing fighter: "keep your fingers down"
only to give up on that when the fighter doesn't really seem to care.

It's bonkers. there are so many ways to fix this issue and with the rules we have today

 

[Literally Bricked]

The problem is it becomes a game both ways. If you punish people too hard it becomes a game to fake out the ref into thinking the leg kick hit your balls, and it becomes like soccer where guys fling themselves across the field and scream in pain.

With the instant replay, if it is reviewed that there was no connection/strike isn't illegal and you are gaming then you should lose automatically as you are stating that a strike left you unable to continue.

 

[Dorkman]

The problem is it becomes a game both ways. If you punish people too hard it becomes a game to fake out the ref into thinking the leg kick hit your balls, and it becomes like soccer where guys fling themselves across the field and scream in pain.

They're allowed to review things now. Review it while the fight is paused for the foul break. If it's legit, point deduct the thrower of the strike. If it's clearly a legal strike deduct a point from the guy faking it, or end the fight in the case of I think it was James Irvin vs alessio sakara is the example coming to mind

 

[Mr Joyboy]

I'm a huge fan of the speedo-and-boots era of pancrase, and that gives me an idea. Let each fighter start the fight with 5 penalty points, which are independent of and do not affect the judges scoring, these points can only be taken by the ref. Fighters lose those points for knockdowns, fouls, and rope escapes (yes the UFC should have rope escapes). Once a fighter loses all five he loses the fight.

 

[OmegaRugal]

I theorize that it's a combination of fighters realizing they can get at least one free eye poke per fight without being penalized, and the effect of Jon Jones showing that using the threat of an eye poke is an effective way to control distance.

well ... yea.

It works. DC himself learned from the best.

 

[Hotora86]

This solution has a lot of appeal to me, but I think there are two big problems with it.

1) taking a point for each foul (there's often more than one), will have a huge impact on win-loss results, and as much as people bitch about people winning when they fight dirty, people would bitch even more about fighters getting wins on penalty points. The butthurt on the forum would fucking skyrocket.

2) Draws would be much more common, which isn't good for either the fans or the promotion.

As things are, 1 point is a gigantic penalty, and also the minimum available penalty. It might work in, say, a 30 point must system (30-27 being the standard instead of 10-9), where maybe a 1 or 2 point penalty would matter but not be a total game changer.

Point 2) reminds me of my other demand: more 10-10 rounds!

Imagine a boring round where the only notable strike was a foul - these are common recently. Judges give 10-9s at random, often rewarding the offender because the fouled dude became tentative (since he can't see or since his balls hurt). With my approach it would be a 10-9 for the fouled. Fair.

 

[sdpdude9]

Pretty simple way to fix the issue. Penalize the first time and every time. Guarantee fighters stop reaching out with outstretched fingers, are more careful with inside kicks, are more mindful of fence grabbing, and whatever other fouls. Just like any other sport, you don’t get freebies because you didn’t mean to foul. Intent doesn’t make it not illegal.

 

[mirko>anyone]

I actually feel that nut shots from leg kicks are less common these days. Fighters have gotten good at avoiding the inside leg kicks, and it's also a slower kick to throw, so attacking fighters have switched to the new MMA dim mak, the calf kick these days

The GOAT nut shot: 260 pounds of manbearpig kicking your nuts from a sprint. Chris Tuscherer was throwing up afterwards. He showed heart but really shouldn't have continued only to be kicked in the head.

Hol up


Who’s the fat, burly guy that through a “spinning kick” that DRILLED his opponent in the nuts. It’s mostly funny because the guy absolutely didn’t mean to do it, and he was so unathletic that the trajectory of his kick was so far off that it landed flush.

I wanna say his name was Roger Hollet or something close to that. He only fought in the UFC a couple times maybe.

EDIT: Roger Hollett, who isn’t fat at all, destroyed Fabio Maldonado’s genitals.