TORONTO – The rule of the grounded fighter has been misinterpreted and changed over the years.
We’ve seen instances where a fighter has been disqualified for illegally striking a grounded fighter, most recently of note when Greg Hardy struck Allen Crowder with a knee when he was a downed opponent and was rendered unable to continue, thus resulting in a DQ loss for Hardy.
So what constitutes a grounded fighter? Former referee turned Bellator analyst John McCarthy explained the change in rules over the years.
“Back in 2001, when we were doing the unified rules, we started talking about grounded fighter because at the time, in the UFC, if you had someone that was on the ground, I could only punch at them,” McCarthy explained. “I could not kick. I couldn’t kick him to the body, couldn’t kick him to the head obviously, no body, nothing – couldn’t kick their arm, couldn’t kick. So when we did the unified rules, they said, ‘Well, the standing fighter should be able to kick to the body,’ so we changed that, but then the question was, ‘What are we going to say is a grounded fighter,’ and then we went right back to boxing is what they wanted to do.”
In boxing, you can score a knockdown without your opponent being completely on the ground. If anything other than the soles of their feet touches the ground after getting struck, it is considered a knockdown. So when the unified rules in MMA were changed, fighters started to take advantage of the rule, by merely placing the tips of their fingers on the mat, so that they’re considered a grounded fighter.
But McCarthy said that rule had to change, as it made it hard for referees to exactly define and determine what a grounded fighter entailed.
“So we came up with the thing of, ‘All right, we’re going to do that,’ but we were afraid of young fighters,” McCarthy said. “It doesn’t usually happen with really mature and good fighters, getting hit with a leg kick, their legs going out, catching themselves on their hands and feet, trying to pop themselves back up, and punting them in the face while they’re down, so we said ‘All right, both hands palm- or fist-down, and both feet makes you down.’ The whole point was for a fighter to never bend over at the waist.”
However, once again, discussions of the rule emerged, as different states employed different rules, making them far from unified. McCarthy explained how now a fighter has to only have one hand fully palm-down to be considered grounded, a rule that all states have agreed to use.
“Now the rule is, as of 2018, going back to one hand, palm-down, fist-down,” McCarthy said. “So they can’t do anything with fingers. It’s not about bearing weight. They come down here (puts palm on the ground) that puts you down, (puts fingers only on the ground) that does not. So that’s where it is, in all states.
“Flat down, or you’re not down.”
