Joe Rogan says the oblique kick is on its way out of the UFC. Talking with Paddy Pimblett on The Joe Rogan Experience, the longtime commentator said the straight-on stomp to the knee will be made illegal, and he delivered it like a guy who had just remembered he might be early. “It is going to be made illegal. Yes, I know. I think we’re announcing it right now,” Rogan said.
The UFC hasn’t confirmed anything. Last Word On Sports, in a piece syndicated by Yahoo Sports, pointed to the UFC 334 weigh-in show or the Nov. 14 card itself as a possible spot for an announcement. That event is headlined by Josh Hokit challenging Ciryl Gane for the heavyweight championship. Past rule changes came with a grace period before enforcement, so the same outlet expects the ban wouldn’t take effect until 2027 even if it’s announced this weekend.
The subject came up while Rogan and Pimblett were running through the welterweight contenders and landed on Shavkat Rakhmonov. The Kazakh is 19-0, and he beat Ian Garry by decision at UFC 310, but an oblique kick from Garry in that fight tore his ACL and meniscus. He’s been sidelined for nearly two years and has struggled with the recovery, which has made him the go-to example for anyone arguing the technique should go.
Pimblett asked Rogan directly whether he thinks it should be banned, and Pimblett made his own position clear. He doesn’t think it should be illegal, and he argued it’s something fighters should have to deal with like everything else in a fight. Rogan met him partway. “I agree in some ways, but the problem is it ends careers. It can change careers forever. Thiago Santos against Jon Jones. He was never the same again,” he said.
This would be the next entry in a fairly recent run of rule changes. The last update rewrote what counts as a downed opponent and legalized 12-to-6 elbows, starting Nov. 1, 2024. Under those rules, the elbows behind Jones’s only career loss, against Matt Hamill in 2009, would have been fair.
The people with the most to lose here are the fighters who build around kicks to the lead leg. Garry uses the oblique kick as a real part of his game, and Khalil Rountree and Max Holloway both throw a similar side kick to the leg. How the rule is actually written will decide whether those guys are adjusting a habit or tearing up a game plan.
My take: Rogan’s injury argument is real, and anyone who watched Santos limp through the later rounds against Jones knows it. The drafting is where this gets tricky. There’s a lot of daylight between a stomp that hyperextends a planted knee and a side kick that lands on the thigh, and a sloppy rule hands referees a judgment call they’ll get wrong in real time. I’m also wary of where “it ends careers” goes next, because a well-locked heel hook can do exactly that, and I’d hate to see that logic wander into the grappling. Ban the kick if you have to. Write the definition like someone who has actually thrown one, and then show it to us at UFC 334 on Saturday.
