[autotag]Daniel Cormier[/autotag] not a fan of legalizing 12-6 elbows in MMA.
Starting in November, the Unified MMA Rules will change, with 12-6 elbows being allowed in fights. The rules committee of the Association of Boxing and Combative Sports Commissions voted unanimously to lift the ban, which had been in place since the creation of the unified MMA rules in 2000.
Cormier explains that by legalizing 12-6 elbows, MMA will return to being a violent sport that was frowned upon in the early days, before the rules were implemented.
“I don’t like it,” Cormier said in his “Funky and the Champion” show with Ben Askren. “I don’t like 12-to-6 elbows, and I don’t like football kicks. I don’t want to see football kicks. … Here’s my thought: When I was fighting ‘Rumble’ Johnson, you couldn’t (throw an elbow straight down), but if you do a little arc, that’s fine. So I was able to cut ‘Rumble’ with an arched elbow, but it actually went down very little in terms of not being straight up and down.
“I just don’t want anything that makes the fight look like a street fight. And that. John McCain, before he passed away, was against fighting because he said ‘it’s human cockfighting’. Then they showed these videos of gang fights, people running and people on the ground, and they kicked them in the face. If we get to football kicks, it starts to look like that again, and that’s not good. I don’t really care about 12-6 elbows, but I think the moment we start opening up those rules again, it’s going to be more and more and more and eventually we’re going to get back to football kicks.”
The most infamous case involving the 12-6 elbow involved current UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones, whose only loss in his career came because he was disqualified for landing multiple elbows 12-6 on Matt Hamill in December 2009. At the time, Jones appealed to the Nevada Athletic Commission but without success.
UFC CEO Dana White supports having Jones’ defeat overturned.
Related
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Jon Jones reacts to ABC lifting ban on 12-6 elbows: ‘Undefeated then, undefeated now’
ABC will vote on rule changes: allowance for 12-6 elbows, new definition of fighter on the ground
This article was originally published on MMA Junkie: UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier Opposes ABC’s Decision to Lift Ban on 12-6 Elbows and Explains Why
