Bryce Mitchell has one of the rarest wins in UFC history. He’s one of only five men to finish a fight in the Octagon with a Twister, a spine crank most grapplers drill for years and never land, sharing that list with Chan Sung Jung, Da’Mon Blackshear, Charles Johnson and Murtazali Magomedov. So it’s a strange thing to hear him say, on Instagram this week, that every time you watch him fight, you’re watching him without his best weapon.
That weapon, according to Mitchell, is the stomp. Specifically, a foot driven into the face of a grounded opponent, the kind of thing Pride FC allowed and the unified rules do not. Sherdog and Yahoo Sports picked up the post, in which Mitchell argued that MMA should look more like a street fight.
“There’s not a more effective move than the stomp; there never has been, there never will be,” Mitchell said. “I would have a lot more finishes if I could stomp a grounded opponent on their face. That’s actually my best move.”
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I’ve read that last line a few times now. It’s the most honest thing in the whole rant, and it’s also the reason the argument falls apart.
Where he’s right
Mitchell didn’t wake up and start lobbying for stomps out of nowhere. He was responding to the recent talk about banning the oblique kick, the sidekick to the knee that coaches love and opponents dread. On that point, he makes a case worth hearing.
“It’s a completely fair kick; anybody can do it,” he said. “Yeah, you get your knees hurt. But guess what? It’s a fight.”
He calls the oblique kick one of his best weapons, and for a fighter currently sitting No. 13 in the bantamweight rankings, every tool matters. The oblique kick is a standing technique between two standing people. Both fighters can see it coming, both can throw it, and both can check or angle off it. There’s a symmetry to it that fits the sport. Pulling it out of the rulebook would hand an advantage to whoever is willing to walk forward flat-footed, and Mitchell clearly feels that already. “All the rules favor the boxers who are scared of takedowns and kicks,” he wrote in the caption.
I’d go further than he did on one thing. His aside about weight cuts deserves more airtime than the stomp. He suggested taking weight cuts out entirely so fighters can “really get down and see who’s best.” Whatever you think of the rest, a fighter asking the sport to stop letting people dehydrate themselves before competition is a fighter pointing at a real problem.
Where he loses me
The stomp is a different animal. Mitchell’s oblique kick defense rests on fairness, that anybody can do it. The stomp, by his own description, only works when the other person is already on the ground. It travels in one direction, from the fighter on top down to the fighter who’s lost position, and Mitchell’s pitch for it is that it would make finishing easier for him. That’s an argument for Bryce Mitchell’s highlight reel. I don’t hear an argument for the sport in it.
MMA already gives a fighter in top position plenty of ways to end things. Mitchell’s own résumé proves it. A man who can twist an opponent’s spine into a submission doesn’t lack for finishing tools on the mat. He wants a faster one, and he wants it delivered from a standing height onto a skull that has nowhere to go.
The street fight framing doesn’t hold up either. Fighters don’t train for street fights. They train in gyms, under coaches, for specific opponents on specific dates, and the rules are part of what lets them do that for 10 or 15 years instead of three. Rounds give corners a minute to fix things. Referees give the person on the bottom a chance to survive. Strip those away, as Mitchell suggests with rounds, and the only thing you’d measure is who’s least damaged going in, which tells you very little about who’s best.
“Man, y’all need to toughen up,” he said to close the clip. Toughness was never the shortage here. Anyone who has watched a bantamweight absorb oblique kicks for 15 minutes and keep coming forward knows that.
So keep the oblique kick. Have the weight cut conversation in earnest. Leave the stomp in the Pride highlight packages where it belongs.
The current rules get their next test Saturday, Nov. 7, at UFC Vegas 124 at the Meta APEX, where Magomedov, unbeaten at 11-0 and the most recent man to join Mitchell on that Twister list, faces Jose Delano without a single stomp at his disposal.
