I have lost money on a lot of things in this sport, including one memorable night when I trusted a wrestler to just hold a guy down for three rounds. So pardon me if my first reaction to Scott Coker’s rules request was a handicapper’s question. Who gets worse when lying on your back stops being a safe place to wait?
Coker announced Tuesday that Ki MMA, the promotion he launched this past September with longtime business partner Rich Chou, has filed a formal request with the California State Athletic Commission. Per his statement on Instagram, Ki MMA wants “to bring elements of the global MMA rules into the unified rules, excluding soccer kicks, stomps and linear knee strikes as per Rule 533.” He asked CSAC to take it up “at the Dec. 1 stakeholders meeting.”
The statement never spells out the actual technique, which is a strange choice for a press release. Former fighter Josh Thomson filled in the blank on X, writing that Coker is leading the charge on “KNEES TO THE HEAD OF A GROUNDED OPPONENT.” Nolan King of MMA Junkie said the same, posting that his “understanding is this request is focused on the allowance of knees to the head on the ground.” The unified rules don’t allow that strike today. RIZIN in Japan does.
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My take is simple. Coker is right on the knees and right to leave the soccer kicks in the drawer.
The Knees Fix a Real Problem
The current rules hand a cheap exit to anyone who wants out of a bad exchange. Touch a hand to the mat, become “grounded,” and your opponent’s best close-range weapon disappears. Anybody who has watched a fighter play hopscotch with one palm on the canvas to bait a foul knows the move. It’s legal gamesmanship, and it rewards the guy losing the exchange.
Grounded knees take that loophole away. They also put a price on lazy shots and on sitting in a turtle position hoping the referee stands things up. Thomson framed it as part of the sport evolving and cited Jon Anik talking on the Anik & Florian podcast about new gloves and open scoring. I’d put this ahead of both. Gloves change how cuts look. This changes decisions fighters make 50 times a fight.
For my line of work, it matters even more in Ki MMA’s specific setup. The promotion is expected to open with a 32-fighter featherweight grand prix, and the bouts will be in a ring, not a cage. Ring plus tournament plus grounded knees means the classic template of pressuring a guy into the fence and leaning on him loses value fast. No fence to lean on, and a guy on all fours eating knees. If I’m pricing those early rounds, the pure control wrestler is the one I’d fade, and the scrambler with a mean front headlock is the live dog I’d want.
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Somebody who came up in that style was thrilled. Cris Cyborg posted “Okay as a Chute Boxe fighter” and called it awesome. Of course she did. Chute Boxe built a reputation on exactly the kind of fight these rules produce.
Gastelum Is Overreaching
Then there’s Kelvin Gastelum, who saw the news and wrote, “Soccer kicks need to come back.” I get the romance. Every fan of a certain age has a PRIDE highlight burned into memory. But Coker’s own statement explicitly excludes soccer kicks and stomps, and that exclusion is why this proposal has a chance in front of a U.S. commission at all.
Ask for knees, you’re negotiating. Ask for soccer kicks, you’re picking a fight with regulators that you’ll lose, and you take the reasonable part down with you. Coker seems to know that. Gastelum’s tweet is fun. It’s also the 12-leg parlay of rules proposals: every leg sounds great and the whole thing never cashes.
The statement’s wording did confuse people, which is Coker’s fault. One user replied to King suggesting the word excluding really meant including. King’s read was that the statement is “saying the strikes listed there will still be excluded,” while admitting the “statement language is tricky.” When half your audience reads your press release backward, write a better press release. Even MMA Fighting’s report turned Coker’s stakeholders meeting into a shareholders meeting in one line.
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Why Coker Needs This
King called the variance “an additional way to stick out,” and that’s the business case. Coker has run Strikeforce and Bellator. He knows a new promotion can’t outspend the UFC or PFL, both of which work under some version of the unified rules depending on where they hold events. A ring, a 32-man bracket and RIZIN-style knees give Ki MMA a product you can’t get on a Saturday UFC card. Alexander K. Lee summed up the media mood with two words on X: “RULES RULE.”
CSAC gets its say at the Dec. 1 meeting. If the commission signs off, I’ll be rebuilding every featherweight’s grappling profile before the first bracket opens, and I’ll be betting against anybody whose plan B is turtling up.
