Earlier this year One Championship held an event in Colorado under their ‘global’ ruleset. The main difference with these compared to the “unified” rules is allowing knees to the head of grounded opponents.
Colorado cleared the way for the use of alternate MMA rulesets in 2021. I obtained a full copy of the approved rules and posted them here. Prior to approving these rules Colorado conducted a review into the use of these strikes. Colorado’s Director reviewed 1,551 bouts under the ruleset and noted knees to the head of a grounded fighter is used in the finishing sequence of only 1.4% of bouts. It is reasonably distributed among weight classes but used more commonly among the lower weight classes and the less by heavyweights.
One’s event in Colorado ran without any notable injuries with the global ruleset.
Recently, however, the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports have pushed back on Colorado asking them to review their decision to allow these alternate rules. Through an open records request I obtained a copy of the ABC’s letter. Below I reproduce it in full.
In short the ABC mentions “Physics, Sport, Science, Clinical Study, Perception and Uniformity” behind their opposion.
It is worth noting that on the uniformity front the current MMA “unified rules” are far from unified across US State and Tribal jurisdictions with several States recently allowing bare knuckle MMA as well.
ONE has publicly been discussing plans to bring more events to the US and has been looking to more jurisdictions to allow their ruleset. This tension between them and the ABC is a story worth following.
Combat Sports Law 