Fighter safety – Should the powerbombpower slams be banned from MMA
Published by Zach Arnold on July 29th, 2010 in Current Events

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I was recently listening to the Pro MMA radio show and there was a discussion between radio host Larry Pepe and MMAMania.com writer Jesse Holland over Sarah Kaufman’s powerbomb of Roxanne Modafferi at Strikeforce’s Everett, Washington event last Friday night (that aired on Showtime). The match, which was for Strikeforce’s 135-pound women’s title, saw Kaufman pick up Modafferi and knock her out with a slam to the canvas. The finish was so spectacular that it became a viral sensation on Youtube and ESPN even ran with it on one of their Top 10 highlight lists.

We’ve seen spectacular slams before in MMA. Think about Bob Sapp’s slam of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira during their Dynamite!! fight in August of 2002 at Kokuritsu (National) Stadium in Tokyo.

Matt Hughes became famous in MMA for his slams of opponents, albeit he slammed opponents on their back. Recently, Gerald Harris slammed Dave Branch down so hard that he won his recent UFC fight by knockout and got a Knockout of the Night bonus for it.

Who could forget Kevin Randleman’s head spike slam on Fedor from several years ago in PRIDE? It was such a violent head slam that I will never forget Mauro Ranallo’s play-by-play of that moment. When I saw the move happen, I along with everyone else watching thought that Randleman was going to beat Fedor. Fedor, somehow, miraculously recovered and managed to dispose of Kevin a couple of minutes later.

However, the granddaddy of all MMA slams came several years back in the PRIDE ring at Saitama Super Arena when Quinton “Rampage” Jackson picked up Ricardo Arona and powerbombed his way out of a submission attempt. He picked up Arona, literally did a powerbomb, slammed Arona down on the mat, and Arona’s head bounced back up and hit Rampage on the drive down. It was incredible. Of all the major slams in Mixed Martial Arts, Rampage’s slam is considered The Gold Standard.

And now Sarah Kaufman’s slam is up near the same pedestal as Rampage’s slam. This led to Larry Pepe asking the following question:

“Should the slam be legal? Because on some level, you’re driving your opponent’s head into the mat and it’s not so dissimilar from an illegal drop on someone’s head. I mean, you’re talking about a very small margin of error. Is fighter safety a question with these slams?”

MMAMania.com’s Jesse Holland responded in the affirmative.

“I’ve never been a fan of the slam and you’re talking to a guy, look, I’m a PRIDE guy from way back, you know, and that was one of those things that bothered me. You can give me a soccer kick all day, but you bring a slam and you talk about… The slam between Kaufman and Modafferi is one thing, but when you got a guy like Quinton Jackson picking you up over his head and putting you onto the canvas or you have a guy, you know look what happened in the Patrick Cote/Alan Belcher. That’s a slam that could have gone very, very wrong. And I think it’s just the risk far outweighs the reward for a slam that you wouldn’t hurt the promotion because we don’t see them that frequently but they make nice highlight clips and they show up on the web sites. Well, that’s all fine and well, but I just feel like we’re playing with fire here with the slam. It’s a dangerous move and I don’t think one that needs to be in Mixed Martial Arts.”

Pepe concurred with Holland’s sentiments.

“Yeah, I’m with you. I think the potential downside in fighter safety is when someone could get paralyzed or even worse with that type of move and, to your point, we don’t see it that often. So what are we losing? I mean, there’s only a handful of them that really come to mind but it just seems like you’re really playing with fighter safety when fighters’ heads are being slammed into a mat, even with the force of the opponent’s body sometimes. The Rampage slam was the pick-up-over-the-head type. The Gerald Harris one, he literally followed him to the mat and kept his arms under his chin so that his head couldn’t move. It just seems to me that to not be worth a highlight reel finish here or there, but we’ll see what happens. It doesn’t look like there’s any movement currently to get away from them but I think that there should be.”

My response to these comments is the following: How do you ban the slam and not ban other moves related to head trauma in MMA?

Think about how the slam is often used in MMA. Someone catches their opponent in a submission or in a bad position. If you have the strength to power out of the position and slam your opponent, you’re trying to break up the submission attempt. If you knock your opponent out, that’s gravy as far as the fighter is concerned. MMA is a violent sport done by professional athletes. When you apply a submission hold on a fighter who has some power, you take the risk of getting slammed. The MMA canvas is not a pro-wrestling mat and a pro-wrestling mat is a hard enough surface to take bumps on. Is it a dangerous move? Absolutely. I don’t dismiss the concerns about the safety of the move.

For a bonus on the side of those wanting to ban power slams in MMA, think about this — you have a sport where performance-enhancing drug usage is relatively high. Urine tests are not catching the cheaters and as I’ve documented before, most athletic commissions are doing the bare minimum to catch the cheaters. In an environment where the sport is already dangerous enough as it is, now you add strength-building drugs into the equations and it makes the slams even more dangerous.

So, if you want to argue that slams that involve head trauma should be eliminated from MMA, I’m willing to listen to you. However, in return I would ask you the following: Are you willing to ban other moves that we currently see in MMA, such as hammer fists on an opponent’s skull while they are down on the canvas? If blunt force trauma to the head is the ultimate issue here that we are dealing with, then you can’t just ban the slams. You have to be willing to address the issue on a greater scale. I’m more than willing to listen to proponents make their cases, but understand that it may not be a very popular case to make with the masses that watch MMA fights.