The highly religious Brazilian fighter left a bad taste in many fans mouths after his submission victory over Mike Pierce. The fighter has many submission victories and a lot of them are by way of Heel Hook, a devastating technique that can damage the knee, foot, and ankle. With his very aggressive leg lock style of fighting, Rousimar Palhares managed to pull a victory over Mike Pierce in just 31 seconds.
While this may be viewed as a boring fight to most, his submissions are the grappling equivalent of a one punch knockout. Heel hooks and knee bars are techniques that are reserved for the more experience in training and competition. At most tournaments you require a lot of experience before you can utilize any leg or ankle lock technique. This is because those technique cause many injuries and don’t require a whole lot of torque to impair someones ability to walk. This is why it was so shocking to see Rousimar Palhares cranking his submission after the bell had wrung. Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened, and Palhares was warned in the past about doing this.
Dana White expressed care for his athletes when dealing with this situation. He stated you can’t have guys doing things like this in a sport. You are going to incur unnecessary injuries, and put fighters out of commission. Rousimar Palhares was fired by Dana White in less than 24 hours after his victory. This was very controversial but Palhares finally admits he was wrong.
Rousimar Palhares quote via The MMA Hour:
“No, I did not want to hurt him. In the heat of the fight I did not feel him tap. Afterwards, when I watched the fight I realized that I held on too long, but I really did not mean to hurt him. He is a fighter like I am and I know he does this for a living and I would never want to hurt him.”
“I think it has a lot to do with my style, I am really aggressive when I go after submissions. There has been times where I do not hold on and people get out and then I lose the fight, I am the way I fight. I’m getting better and been working a lot on this, but, this is my style.”
I guess when you’re a professional fighter and you get fired by the largest fighting league in the world you may think to take a step back and realize you made a mistake. This mistake limits Palhares career opportunities and will hold him back in the Mixed Martial Arts world.
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