Following a three-round action, Edmen Shahbazyan returned to the win column with a convincing unanimous decision victory over Brunno Ferreira at UFC 331. However, the Nevada-based fighter’s otherwise successful night was briefly overshadowed by controversy after he protested knee strikes mid-fight.
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After a lackluster first round, Shahbazyan took control of the fight, picking apart the Brazilian with precise striking. The 28-year-old even scored a vicious knockdown in the third round. Ferreira did have his moments, landing a couple of shots in brief flurries, and knee strikes were among them. Shahbazyan believed those strikes were illegal and complained to the referee at one point, only to learn they were within the rules.
At the UFC 331 post-fight press conference, Shahbazyan referenced Jon Jones, explaining that he had assumed such strikes were illegal before admitting he was mistaken.
“Yeah, so I guess I was mistaken. I didn’t know you can directly hit straight on the knee, and I thought it was a legal move just from prior days. I remember Jon Jones would do it, and they would say it’s an illegal move, but I guess it’s not. So it was my fault. I mean, the fight didn’t stop either way.”
Knee strikes and oblique kicks are two distinct techniques in MMA. A knee strike involves a fighter using his own knee as a weapon to inflict damage, while an oblique kick targets the opponent’s knee joint with the foot or shin. At the UFC 331 fight, Ferreira actually hit the Nevada-based fighter with oblique kicks during the fight, which Shahbazyan described as knee strikes.
Under the Unified Rules of MMA, both are perfectly legal, and Shahbazyan seems to have mixed both techniques up. But the UFC middleweight isn’t the first to believe otherwise.
Interestingly, Shahbazyan pointed to Jon Jones, who was often called out for landing the “illegal” shot in his fights. The former two-division champion used the oblique kick much like today’s calf kicks during his reign, most notably when he dismantled Rampage Jackson at UFC 135.
According to Jones’ coach Mike Winkeljohn, speaking about the Rampage fight, many people mistakenly believed the kick was an illegal maneuver, which was never the case.
“People keep thinking that stuff’s illegal,” Winkeljohn said in a 2011 Bleacher Report interview. “You know what, you’re allowed to give someone brain damage but you can’t hurt their knee? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I knew we had the fight when [Jackson] was looking at the referee like, ‘um, he’s hurting my knee.'”
Beyond the Jackson fight, Jones also used the kick against Daniel Cormier, Thiago Santos and others. But besides him, the former light heavyweight title challenger Khalil Rountree has made the technique a staple of his arsenal. ‘The War Horse’ knocked out Modestas Bukauskas with an oblique kick in their 2021 fight.
Though the UFC middleweight was a little confused about the oblique kicks, he was quite certain about the eye poke he landed during the fight, so he also took some time to address that.
Edmen Shahbazyan opens up about the eye poke incident at UFC 331
Eye pokes have been a recurring issue in the UFC, and it happened again in tonight’s Shahbazyan vs. Ferreira matchup. In round 2, ‘The Golden Boy’ landed an eye poke on his opponent, which he clarified was completely unintentional. But instead of acknowledging it, he shifted the blame onto the Brazilian.
“I think the eye poke was not intentional,” Shahbazyan said at the post-fight presser. “My hands weren’t, like, flat out. It was kind of up. It was, I think, pretty legal. And then he kind of leaned forward; it touched his eye, and yeah. He got that break because I think he was getting tired, and then that’s why he came out crazier in the third round.
Right after the eye poke, the Nevada-based fighter received a stern warning from referee Mike Beltran, though the official didn’t deduct a point. The bout eventually resumed, and Shahbazyan went on to secure the victory. Still, the incident showed that referees are slowly becoming more conscious of at least calling out fighters who poke their opponents.
After all, Tom Aspinall recently had to vacate his belt as a result of Ciryl Gane’s eye poke at UFC 321, which left him inactive for nearly a whole year. That said, Shahbazyan has won four of his last five fights, and that will probably set him up for a matchup with a ranked middleweight, possibly Shara Magomedov next.