MMA Fighter Penalized For Kicking Opponent In The Butthole Area

MMA rules allow fighters to use a rather comprehensive suite of techniques to knock out or choke their opponents into submission, but even in a sport this brutal, some parts of the body are off limits. I’m talking, of course, about the butthole area.

During the third round of the lightweight bout between Alfie Davis and Jorge Kanella at Bellator 223 in London last weekend, Kanella threw a fateful kick towards Davis’s unprotected brown/taint area. Davis reacted with a grimace and outrage, and referee Kevin MacDonald docked Kanella one point. The slowed-down video of the kick shows Kanella’s big toe landing close to Davis’s anus.

Davis won by unanimous decision, with all three judges giving him the fight 29-27. Afterward, he said Kanella’s kick went “right in the gooch.”

“It was like, the bum, right at the bottom of the balls,” Davis said. “If you’re standing up with someone on the floor, you do not go straight line like that. You’re never taught that because it’s a foul. … It slid up. So when I stood up, it was right in the gooch. It’s normally pleasurable for a man, isn’t it? The gooch. We all enjoy the gooch, but not when you’re getting kicked straight in it.”

MMA fighters can kick each other in the butt, but only in the side of the butt—not right down Broadway where much more sensitive areas are located. For his part, Kanella said the butt kick was “normal,” and that Davis cynically faked it.

“I kicked his butt, and that’s normal. That’s not illegal,” Kanella said. “If you watch the video, I didn’t kick him where he says it was. Watch the video, I kicked his butt. He was faking it to get a point deducted, and it worked.”

Whether or not a toe went up a hole, Kanella certainly wasn’t trying to kick the cheeks. He deserved the deduction.