Fouls in MMA are a tricky business. While the sport has its fair share of rules, enforcing them often seems more like a last resort than any kind of regularly useful set of standards. That reality has been at the forefront of discussions around the UFC lately, with a couple high profile fouls leading to somewhat different conclusions.
The disparity in rule enforcement seems especially stark in the case of two recent illegal knees. One landed by now-former bantamweight champion Petr Yan in the fourth round of his title defense against Aljamain Sterling—which rendered Sterling unable to continue and resulted in the stripping of Yan’s belt via a DQ loss.