Three problems with ONE on TNT I Featured match.
Hello, this is Logical MMA!

I’m going to pick up some fights that I interested in from ONE on TNT I that took place in Singapore the other day.
But first, let’s talk about the positioning of ONE on TNT.
The parent organization is ONE Championship (ONE), one of the largest MMA and kicking events in Asia, and it has partnered with American TV station TNT to broadcast live on primetime in the U.S. for four consecutive weeks (ONE on TNT I-IV).
This “ONE on TNT” is an important challenge for ONE, one of the largest MMA companies in Asia, to enter the “world’s largest MMA market”, the United States.
The first such ONE on TNT took place on April 8th, and I focused on the accident that happened in “Eddie Alvarez vs Iuli Lapicus”.
Match Development
Eddie Alvarez is an active fighter in Japan, “former BELLATOR champion” and “former UFC champion”, and is popular worldwide for his dynamic beating style.

Eddie Alvarez
Iuli Lapicus, on the other hand, is a genuine ONE fighter with an almost perfect record of 14-1 in 15 fights, but he has never fought a world class fighter, so this fight will be a test for him.

Iuli Lapicus
Eddie pressured Iuli for a takedown early in the first round and continued to hit him in the side of the head from the top position, but the referee suddenly stopped the fight and called a foul on Eddie.
The reason for the foul was an “attack to the back of the head” by Eddie.
There are three major problems with this ruling.
three major problems
The first is that the referee stopped the fight without a single caution.
It is normal for the referee to give at least one warning because the ambiguous location of the back of the head is difficult for a fighting fighter to judge.
Secondly, in most other fights, this attack is passed off as acceptable.
An attack to the complete back of the head, right behind the head, is certainly dangerous and could have been stopped, but an attack to the border of the temporal and back of the head, as in this case, is more likely to be let go, and Eddie must have judged it to be OK based on his past experience.
The third thing I wanted to say was that Iuli was in a position where he could only hit the back of the head.
The definition of an “attack to the back of the head” is “an attack that does not fall on the ears,” but Iuli was blatantly covering his ears with his hands, so all of Eddie’s attacks were considered “attacks to the back of the head. MMA is a martial art, and it doesn’t exist without the will to fight.

Iuli covering his ears.
The same thing happened in the 2006 HERO’s match between Kaoru Uno and Black Mamba.
With Uno on the ground and Mamba in a standing position, Uno got himself into a crawling position, and since kicks to the face and knees are prohibited in HERO’s, Mamba had to crouch down to attack Uno. The only way for Mamba to attack Uno is to crouch down and hit him, which is extremely inefficient. This was another tactic that took advantage of a loophole in the rules. I remember thinking, “Crawling during a martial arts match?

Example of an athlete who gets down on all fours by himself
In this article, I introduced some of the “tactics that take advantage of loopholes in the rules” that were seen at the recent ONE on TNT event.
As the sport has evolved from “NHB” and “VARITUDE” to “MMA” and improved its competitiveness, the sport will continue to evolve along with the development of the rules, but there are many areas that are left to the awareness and judgment of the fighters and referees, and I think it is important for everyone involved to work on the future development of the sport.
So let’s keep it logical tomorrow!
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