One Championships Bans Soccer Kicks

One Championships is becoming more and more popular in the MMA world with each event that they put on, but now they have made a move that will help them go more mainstream in the eyes of the company chairman, Chatri Sityodtong.

That move is, that effective immediately, the promotion has banned the use of soccer kicks to a downed opponent, which was revealed at a recent media scrum.

“As of this Macau event, we will not allow soccer kicks to head anymore…” said the company chairman Chatri Sityodtong.

While the promotion will continue on using an international rule set for their events, instead of the unified rules of mixed martial arts (like the UFC or Bellator MMA does), this will be the lone change to their rule set going forward.

“There’s bad publicity. If we really want to go mainstream, people will have to understand that. We have to make certain steps…” says Sityodtong.

“If you look at studies that were done on soccer kicks, it’s the same as a normal head kick because you cannot generate more pivotal force,” Sityodtong pointed. “It’s more of a perception thing. No one has been injured and no one has been in any serious situation from a soccer kick.”

One of the bigger reasons, other than making the promotion gain more mainstream appeal, is that te company is continuing to grow with new investors.

“Everything we are doing, especially with the investment from Temasek (Holdings Pte.) and Heliconia (Capital Management), it has really raised the bar for everything that we do in terms of institutionalization of the sport…” says Sityodtong.