Yeah, so, Roger Huerta. Soccer-kicked into oblivion at ONE FC this past weekend, as if he no longer needed that head or something. Outrage! Bemusement! Aggregation! I don't have much by way of opinion to add to the subject, except to point out that it was just as brutal when Renato "Babalu" Sobral did it to Brad Kohler in the WEF back in the day, and it was no less unkind whenever it happened in PRIDE. But I will tell you the story about the only time I've ever seen a soccer kick go down in person - which, believe it or not, didn't occur in a UCL bout, but at a sanctioned show in New Jersey.
Extreme Challenge 78 was the event, which was an Ed Hsu-run show under Monte Cox's promotional banner. The venue was the storied Convention Hall in Asbury Park, and though the main event had Tim Boetsch crushing sambo specialist Oleg Savitsky, the most memorable scrap was between local fighter Lewis Pascavage and Brazilian transplant Carlos Eduardo. Eduardo was "fresh off the boat", you see, and his grasp of the Unified Rules circa 2007 was tenous at best, so when he and Pascavage clinched up against the cage and Eduardo managed to pull the American's legs out from under him, why not punt the dude square in the chops?
Fifty-eight seconds was the official time of the disqualification, and I swear I thought referee Big Dan was going to summarily execute Eduardo for the transgression. Nick Lembo issued a year-long suspension to Eduardo on the spot, despite Eduardo's coach saying something along the lines of "He's used to vale tudo rules in Brazil. Cut him some slack, eh?" As for Pascavage, he was down for a while (and rightfully so). It's one thing to agree to a bout in Singapore where soccer kicks are legal; it's another thing entirely if you're fighting in New Jersey and you have no reason to expect you'd be eating foot.
So, to paraphrase "The West Wing": Soccer kicks. Boy, I don't know.
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