One of the reasons I love mixed martial arts so much is that it’s a sport that never runs out of new things to show us. But on Saturday, the MMA gods showed us something really, really goddamn stupid.
Late in the fourth round of the first of UFC 259’s three title fights, UFC bantamweight champion Petr Yan had Aljamain Sterling on the ropes. The top 135-pound fighter in the world had started to wear down his energetic challenger with his powerful punching, and had refused to allow one of the sport’s elite grapplers to take him to the ground. He was up on two of three judge’s scorecards and was in the process of completely taking the fight over.
Yan was dominating the fourth round when, with just over 30 seconds to go, he had perhaps the sport’s single biggest all-time brain fart. Yan had stopped another Sterling takedown attempt, in the process driving the challenger down towards the mat in a sort of front facelock.
The Unified Rules of MMA, which have been the standard in the sport for about 20 years, prohibit knees and kicks to the head of a grounded opponent – a “grounded opponent” being defined as a fighter with anything but the soles of their feet on the ground. With his right knee planted squarely in the middle of the mat, Sterling was very obviously a downed fighter. But in one of the most shocking moments of idiocy and pure lack of awareness in the history of the sport, Yan lined up Sterling’s head like a 45-yard field goal, and kneed the fuck out of it.
In the days following the foul, there have been many explanations offered as to exactly what Yan was thinking: miscommunication about the rules stemming from his poor command of English, bad advice from his corner, simply not seeing Sterling’s knee was down, etc. Whichever explanation is the correct one, Yan became the first fighter in UFC history – and quite possibly the first ever in a major MMA organization – to lose his title by disqualification, when an obviously concussed Sterling couldn’t keep going.
And in the end, I’m ultimately not particularly concerned with what Yan’s rationale for that blatantly illegal knee was. It was, at best, a shocking display of absentmindedness from someone who is supposed to be one of the best fighters in the world. It is, quite simply, a Dumb Bitch Moment.
Naturally, it got me thinking. That has to be the single biggest Dumb Bitch Moment in the history of the UFC, right? Right? What if it isn’t? What if I’m forgetting something even dumber? So I went back through history and tracked down every single disqualification in UFC history. It wasn’t as hard as you might think: DQs are extremely rare, and only twice – 2012 and 2020 – did multiple UFC fights end via disqualification in a single year. In 2016, for example, not a single one of the 493 fights that took place in the Octagon resulted in a DQ. Even though the UFC has held more and more events every year, the rate of DQs has actually generally trended down.
Once I realized watching every UFC disqualification was achievable in an afternoon, I knew I had to do it. So come with me on a journey through the biggest Dumb Bitch Moments in UFC history: along the way, I’ll be awarding each DQ a (completely subjective and unscientific) Dumb Bitch Rating on a scale of 10, in an effort to determine whether or not Yan’s knee is, in fact, No. 1.
Note: I watched these fights using UFC Fight Pass, which you have to pay to subscribe to. I’ve included YouTube videos of fights where I could find them.
Alex Andrade vs. Amaury Bitetti, UFC 26
Ironically, the first UFC disqualification actually came about a year before the adoption of the Unified Rules of MMA and the beginning of what is considered the modern era of the UFC. The sport still mostly resembled what we watch today, but with some major differences: for one, you could wear shoes in the Octagon. That was a great thing for wrestle-heavy fighters like Mark Coleman, who could continue to wear wrestling shoes for traction in the cage.
The only drawback: if you wore shoes in the Octagon, you weren’t allowed to kick your opponent. Well, most of the time. Rules seemed to change from event to event – although kicking with shoes was supposedly banned, Pete Williams was sure as shit wearing shoes when he booted Coleman unconscious with a vicious head kick in 1998. But kicking with shoes was most assuredly banned when Williams’ Lion’s Den teammate, Alex Andrade, fought Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend Amaury Bitetti at UFC 28 in 2000.
The announcers make reference to this the second the bell rings, even mentioning that Andrade had told them before the event that he had made the decision to sacrifice kicking in favor of greater traction. The fight was action-packed, with both fighters hurting each other on the feet in the first round – but when Andrade put Bitetti on his butt with a right hand he ran up and kicked him in the head, forcing an immediate stoppage.
It’s a really lame looking little dink of a kick – it looks like Andrade realized he shouldn’t be doing it mid-kick, but couldn’t stop himself. Referee John McCarthy immediately deducts a point from Andrade. They restart the fight, and the free-swinging Andrade immediately hurts Bitetti again. They clinch up for a bit, separate, and then with both fighters at distance for the first time for a while, Andrade just….. kicks him in the leg.
At this point, you’re realizing that Andrade might not be working with a full deck. McCarthy takes a SECOND point, but Bitetti is still up and ready to go. The round ends. We come back in the second, but less than a minute in, there’s Andrade again, swinging away with a head kick just moments after having two points taken away from him for doing exactly that same thing. McCarthy, never one to mess around, immediately disqualifies him.
The first kick, coming in a frenzied exchange where Andrade was trying to get the finish, can almost be excused: it’s stupid, but it seems like a simple reaction that Andrade realizes midway through was wrong. The next two have no explanation. Both came at range, when Andrade had all kinds of time to think to himself about what he was doing. Both came after he had already been penalized for doing the one fucking thing he wasn’t supposed to do. I don’t know if the stiff shots he ate early on from Bitetti caused his brain not to function, but it’s really incredible. This is Alex Andrade just forgetting the rules that he had imposed on himself, multiple times in a very short period of time.
Because that’s the thing: no one forced him to wear shoes. He could have kicked Bitetti all day long, just take off the damn shoes! It’s an error so unforced and so basic that it just boggles the mind. We already might have found something dumber than the Yan thing.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 9/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Ricardo Almeida vs. Matt Lindland, UFC 31
Matt Lindland, an Olympic medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling who ranked for a time as one of the top middleweights of the early 2000s, had an interesting relationship with the rules throughout his combat sports career. Lindland earned his spot on the U.S. Olympic team in 2000 after a protracted legal battle stemming from an alleged trip in the finals of the Olympic trials.
Lindland’s opportunity at a UFC title, when he challenged middleweight champion Murilo Bustamante in 2002, resulted in the infamous “Team Quest Tap”: Lindland attempted to fake a tap to a Bustamante armbar early in the fight, protested that he hadn’t actually submitted, got the referee to restart the fight, then actually tapped out to a guillotine choke in the third round.
And in May 2001, in Lindland’s second UFC fight against BJJ star (and, today, a well-known trainer) Ricardo Almeida, Lindland showed just how well he knew the rulebook. Lindland, in an absolute masterclass of shithousery, essentially baited a disqualification finish out of Almeida, adding insult to injury in a fight he was dominating anyway.
The fight proceeds more or less how you would expect between an Olympic wrestler and a four-time ADCC submission grappling medalist: Lindland getting takedowns, controlling position and popping Almeida with punches, while Almeida works for submissions off his back. Lindland, a savvy grappler even this early in his career, is one step ahead of his opponent.
Relatively early on you can start to sense Almeida getting frustrated. At the end of the first round, Almeida is warned by referee Mario Yamasaki for swiping at Lindland with his leg while both fighters are on the ground, and Yamasaki ultimately takes a point. Almeida catches him with another illegal upkick towards the end of the second, but it came just an instant after Lindland’s knee touched the ground – it’s close enough that it’s hard to blame Almeida too much, but he loses another point.
At a certain point, it seems like Lindland has become very conscious of the fact that Almeida is in trouble. He’s in full control of the fight – Almeida has little answer for his powerful clinch takedowns – but you start to see Lindland kneeling in perfect upkick range, changing his posture just enough to confuse Almeida. It’s like he’s trying to bait another illegal kick. This is the kind of shit we would come to expect from Matt Lindland.
It pays off. Almeida catches him with another illegal upkick with less than a minute left in the fight – it’s just a little flick of the foot, and although Almeida’s toes barely paintbrush Lindland, the American immediately turns and whines to the referee. Yamasaki immediately waves it off.
Had Lindland just waited in Almeida’s guard for 40 more seconds, he would have won a lopsided decision. But Lindland was always searching for every little edge, every little gap in the rulebook. The Unified Rules were almost brand-new at this time, but he knew that shit back to front already. You almost have to feel sorry for Almeida – but after losing two points by the end of the third, he should have known better.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 6.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Wes Sims vs. Frank Mir, UFC 43
In the early 2000s, Frank Mir blasted onto the scene of the UFC heavyweight division like few had ever before. Mir was young, big, very athletic, and one of the most skilled jiu-jitsu threats the division had seen before or since: a shallow heavyweight talent pool had little answers for his submissions, and by June 2004, at the age of just 25, he was breaking Tim Sylvia‘s arm in less than a minute to win a world title.
Mir’s last stop on his way to a shot at Sylvia was a guy named Wes Sims, one of the most massive fighters to ever step into the Octagon, and who had a truly bizarre MMA career. Standing 6-foot-10, Sims was a former college basketball player who was recruited into MMA by Mark Coleman, and while he ultimately kind of sucked, he certainly ended up in a lot of memorable situations: whether it was getting bitten during his fight with Mike Kyle, his weird brawl with Sylvia in 2004, or just being an incredible asshole during the Ultimate Fighter 10.
None, however, were more memorable than his program with Mir in 2003-04. Their first encounter featured one of the most blatant fouls you’ll ever see – it’s honestly kind of sickening. Sims rushes directly at Mir and is taken down with an immediate double-leg with his trouble, and Mir goes to work.
Mir was so much better on the ground than his competition at this stage that it seems like an inevitability that Sims is going to be finished. Sure enough, about a minute into the fight Mir is in mount, and seconds later he’s working on a choke. But Sims manages to survive, and when Mir transitions to an armbar, the big guy slips out and stands back up for the first time in the fight.
Sims is in one hell of a position here: he’s a big, powerful guy standing over top his opponent, and he’s finally free to bring down some havoc. He ultimately chooses the wrong kind of havoc. Sims grabs onto the cage (a foul in and of itself) and just starts stomping on Mir’s head – I count five stomps before referee Nelson Hamilton is able to get in and break it up.
Mir, having had his face bashed into pieces, is unable to continue. The truly idiotic part is that when Hamilton breaks it up, Sims appears to think that he’s won the fight, and he continues to celebrate until the word “disqualification” is announced. Despite the fact that Sims had eight pro fights under his belt, he simply had that poor of an understanding of the rules.
How do you make it this far in a professional sport and know this little about what you’re actually allowed to do? Few moments of idiocy in the sport’s history are quite this blatant and revealing as this one from Sims. This one will be tough to top.
Don’t worry though: Mir completely kicked his ass in the rematch. So there was a happy ending.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 9/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Luiz Cane vs. James Irvin, UFC 77
After Sims made mincemeat out of Mir’s face, we’d have to wait over four years for another disqualification in the UFC. That was when light heavyweights Luiz Cane and James Irvin came together to make some history, breaking the longest DQ drought in UFC history on the promotion’s final show of the year.
Irvin has a couple interesting distinctions in his MMA career. When middleweight GOAT Anderson Silva decided to start messing around at 205 in 2008, the UFC chose Irvin to be his first opponent in a Spike TV show that was expressly put together to counter-program the first Affliction MMA pay-per-view. Irvin got detonated. He also was part of perhaps the only fight in history to end via No Contest (both fighters fell out of the cage): his 2006 fight with Ultimate Fighter 1 alum Bobby Southworth was called off after just 17 seconds when someone apparently forgot to lock the cage door, Southworth clinched Irvin into it, both guys fell onto the entrance ramp and Irvin got hurt.
But on Dec. 29, 2007, Irvin was just a rising, hungry UFC fighter with knockout power who was trying to establish himself. At the time, his bout with Cane was an interesting meeting between fighters who were considered two of the more promising young light heavyweights around. Cane was undefeated, and had built himself a little bit of hype with strong performances on the Brazilian circuit. Irvin had been up and down, but had shown some real flashes. This showcase didn’t go as planned for anyone involved.
Cane-Irvin immediately starts shaping up to be a good one, with both fighters tagging each other with hard punches within the first minute. With Irvin starting to assert himself on the feet, Cane catches a body kick and takes him down. Irvin gets his back on the cage, and it’s evident that Cane won’t hold him down for long – Cane decides to try to get in a couple good shots before they’re back standing.
That manifests itself in a crunching knee right to the side of Irvin’s head, while Irvin’s left knee is still firmly on the mat. Irvin is obviously badly hurt, but he eventually makes his way to his feet and appears to have intentions of continuing the fight, only for the doctor to wave things off. DQ.
You’ll start to find that as the years go on and people get better at not fighting like morons, most DQs will be some variation of this. A guy gets a little too frisky during ground-and-pound, lines up a knee when he thinks he’s clear, but it turns out he’s not clear. At a certain point, you’re just evaluating how borderline it is. This one is relatively bad, though: Irvin has started the process of getting up, but he’s still clearly on a knee when Cane blasts him. You gotta be smarter than that.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 5.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Jon Jones vs. Matt Hamill, The Ultimate Fighter 10 finale
Before last weekend, Jon Jones’ disqualification loss to Matt Hamill in 2009 was easily the most infamous such result in UFC history. Jones is considered possibly the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, but even though he’s never been cleanly beaten in the cage, he has no chance of going down as an undefeated fighter. There has always been one blemish on his record. That’s this fight, when Jones was tossed in one of the most spurious applications of an already vague rule in MMA history.
Jones ultimately fulfilled every bit of his staggering promise, becoming undoubtedly the greatest light heavyweight of all time. At the time, however, Jones was still the can’t-miss prospect, one who had already been capturing the imagination of fans with his once-in-a-century talent. Jones, just 22 years old, had looked incredible in three straight wins to open his UFC career, including a win over double-tough veteran Stephan Bonnar that included a jaw-dropping spinning back elbow that ranks among his iconic highlights.
Jones’ fight with Hamill promised to be the big showcase that launched him into the upper ranks of contendership. Best remembered as the barrier-breaking first deaf UFC fighter – they made a movie about his college wrestling career – Hamill was a tough, strong guy, a really good wrestler, and a well-established difficult out. It was a perfect gatekeeper vs. hot prospect matchup. And it had a lot of buzz: Jones-Hamill was the feature attraction of the Ultimate Fighter 10 finale, aside from the finals of the tournament itself.
It appeared like Jones was blasting through that gate. Jones dominated the first round, using his length to dominate the distance and keep Hamill at bay, pounding him with kicks, and defending Hamill’s takedowns. Jones emphatically spikes Hamill to the ground with an amazing Greco-Roman trip midway through the round and proceeds to bash the shit out of him, crushing Hamill with a torrent of elbows from mount that bust the veteran open.
Once Jones gets to mount, his ground-and-pound is so fast, brutal and aggressive that there’s little Hamill can do to defend. Referee Steve Mazzagatti absolutely should have stopped the fight, and at one point, Jones is hammerfisting Hamill in the face while looking up at Mazzagatti and wondering what he needs to do. With just over a minute left in the round, however, Mazzagatti finally steps in – but not to award Jones the TKO victory. He had seen a couple elbows that looked a little dodgy.
According to the Unified Rules, “12-to-6” elbow strikes, where a fighter attacks downwardly using the point of the elbow, are illegal. You’re not allowed to do the “Macho Man” Randy Savage downward elbow drop on someone. And to be fair: a couple of the elbows Jones threw at the end did appear to be 12-to-6 elbows. Mazzagatti breaks it up, and when Hamill can’t continue, he awards him the win by DQ.
The only problem with that is, Hamill couldn’t continue because he had been mercilessly, legally been getting the shit beaten out of him for over a minute straight, and Mazzagatti had done nothing to protect him. There’s no reason the fight should have still been going on. Although Jones did commit a foul, he shouldn’t have been in position to commit it.
What’s worse, 12-to-6 elbows are almost never called. They happen all the time, but the rule is so loosely defined that referees generally stay away from enforcing it. I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen a referee call out 12-to-6 elbows in a UFC fight. With this spurious application of a rule that’s never enforced, well after the fight should have been stopped, Steve Mazzagatti robbed Jon Jones of his perfect record and the legacy boost that comes with being undefeated. It’s one of the most controversial stoppages of all time, and deservedly so.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 1.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points (for Jones), 10/10 (for Mazzagatti)
Greg Soto vs. Matt Riddle, UFC 111
Broooooooo.
Before Matt Riddle was the WWE United States Champion, swaggering around the ThunderDome with his flip-flops on, he was a legitimate UFC fighter, and a pretty decent one. Riddle is one of the few UFC fighters of the modern era to have made his pro debut in the Octagon, having earned his way onto the cast of The Ultimate Fighter 7 while still an amateur.
He did pretty well, all things considered. He was famously on a four-fight win streak when he was released from the UFC in 2013 – the issue was two of those wins were overturned afterward because he kept failing drug tests. The man loved weed too much, and if you’ve ever listen to him talk, it doesn’t surprise you.
In one of his earlier UFC fights, Riddle was matched up with Greg Soto, an undefeated debutant out of New Jersey who carried a similar reputation as a skilled submission grappler. Riddle was largely in control of the fight heading into the third round: really big for the welterweight division, Riddle was doing a good job outmuscling Soto in the clinch and getting top pressure.
Still, Soto was making it a scrap, landing some good shots on the feet late in the second and fighting with a lot of energy early in the third. We’re shaping up for a furious finish when Riddle scores a double-leg takedown. Soto uses rubber guard to attempt a triangle choke off his back, and wary of the threat, Riddle moves away. As he moves back, with both knees on the ground, Soto smashes him in the face with a push kick.
Riddle comes away with a glassy-eyed look on his face – having watched him regularly as a wrestler, that honestly might just be his regular look and he was actually OK – and the fight is eventually stopped. It feels like Soto thought that Riddle was standing up, but instead of moving upwards, he was actually moving backwards. Still, he’s gotta know that Riddle isn’t that short, and that he’s not going to be fighting while squatting like a baseball catcher. Not a great one.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 6/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Erick Silva vs. Carlo Prater, UFC 142
There was once a time where Erick Silva was one of the most exciting young welterweight prospects in the UFC. I would know, I was completely on the hype train. Silva was the welterweight champion of the respected Brazilian promotion Jungle Fight when he signed with the UFC in 2011, and very quickly showed an exciting aggression and an ability to score quick finishes.
In the end, he never really made it to the title hunt – he did main event a Fight Night card against Matt Brown in 2014 and put together a pretty fun highlight reel, but he never progressed past being a fringe contender. Still, his fights were almost always entertaining, he was always on the attack, and you knew he was going to bring it.
Sometimes, that would be to his detriment. Such as it was in his second UFC fight in 2012, against well-traveled veteran Carlo Prater, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who had finally made his way to the Octagon after 40 professional fights. It was an interesting fight on paper. Prater was attempting to establish himself after well over a decade as a professional, while Silva was the young stud attempting to continue his rise. The two Brazilians were fighting in front of their home fans in Rio de Janeiro. They got a plum spot on the main card to boot.
We ultimately got only 29 seconds of the fight, in one of the quickest DQs in UFC history. Silva explodes at Prater right away and blasts him with a brilliant knee that drops him, and starts blasting the veteran with hammerfists as Prater desperately tries to grab onto a panic single-leg takedown. Mario Yamasaki steps in, and it looks like Silva has earned another quick TKO win.
Silva celebrates emphatically as the crowd cheers. Damn, this kid is going somewhere! It’s only when Silva walks over to have his hand raised that there’s the hint that something has gone awry: Yamasaki starts talking to Silva in Portuguese, and Silva looks confused. Hilariously, in the background you can also see ring announcer Bruce Buffer telling commentator Joe Rogan what’s actually going on, and a similarly befuddled Rogan saying “What?” Buffer then surprises the crowd by announcing that Prater, not Silva, is the winner by disqualification, due to “illegal head blows.”
So yeah – I guess some of the finishing strikes were to the back of Prater’s head? Allegedly, at least. Rogan goes over the finishing sequence with Silva in the ring, and is counting them out: “That’s legal, that’s legal, that’s legal.” There are a couple that are maybe borderline, but no worse than what you’ll see in any other similar situation. Silva should have gotten the quick TKO win in front of his home crowd, but instead gets it taken away from him. Like the Jones fight, this is another case of a referee overstepping and robbing a fighter of a deserved win.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 1/10 (for Silva), 9/10 (for Yamasaki)
Alessio Sakara vs. Patrick Cote, UFC 154
Oh man, you want to remember some guys? Let’s remember some guys! How about Patrick Cote, a guy who had three separate stints fighting in the UFC, seemingly stayed around forever, and memorably had his knee explode during his one title opportunity against Anderson Silva. Or how about Alessio Sakara, pretty entertaining striker, absolutely covered himself in tattoos, had that weird thing about being a Roman legionary?
By Nov. 2012, both were longtime UFC veterans at a career crossroads. Cote had made his way back to the UFC earlier in the year, but had lost his comeback fight to Cung Le. (Speaking of, remember Cung Le? He ruled!) Sakara, on the other hand, had lost two in a row, and was trying to hold onto his spot. It was a perfect opportunity for some dumb shit to happen and ruin it all for everyone.
Cote, a native of Quebec, is fighting in Montreal in front of a crowd that’s absolutely roaring for him. Outside of Georges St-Pierre, he was perhaps the most well-known French-Canadian fighter in the world. Cote lands a big combination and a knee that stuns Sakara in the first minute, and the crowd is chanting his name. But Sakara clinches up, turns him against the cage and starts blasting him with elbows. Cote goes down.
What proceeds is similar to Silva-Prater. Cote, rocked, shoots a takedown, and Sakara blasts him with hammerfists that force Dan Miragliotta to stop the fight. Like Silva, Sakara celebrates rapturously, thinking he’s earned a crucial first-round win. But unlike the Silva-Prater fight, there isn’t much surprise when it turns into a DQ: as they replay the finish, you can clearly see Sakara blast him with five or six punches that are just squarely, directly on the back of the head.
Nothing borderline about it. Cote gets a big roar from the crowd when he’s announced the winner by DQ, and one loss later, Sakara was out of the UFC. This one was Sakara’s own fault: he evidently got caught up in the moment and didn’t think to place his shots. He just brought them down right on the back of the head, and that’ll get you every time.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 7/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Maximo Blanco vs. Akira Corassani, The Ultimate Fighter 18 finale
Oh man, Maximo Blanco! Aside from having one of the coolest names in the history of professional sports, Blanco was a guy who seemingly had something memorable happen every single time he was in the cage. He was last seen in 2016, somehow getting himself choked completely unconscious by Chas Skelly in only 19 seconds. He had quite a few sub-minute wins as well. And in 2013, he set the record for quickest disqualification in UFC history, breaking Silva’s record at just 25 seconds.
It’s the finale of the Ultimate Fighter 18 – the first one that had women compete – and Blanco is facing Akira Corassani, a pretty decent Swedish featherweight who later had the misfortune of fighting Dustin Poirier and Max Holloway back-to-back. The fight starts, and as he was wont to do, Blanco goes directly at his opponent. He lands a couple clean right hands on his opening rush, and quickly takes Corassani down.
Things are looking pretty good for Maximo Blanco, I have to say. But as they start to get up, Blanco nails Corassani with a knee while Corassani’s knee is just barely touching the ground. Corassani is stunned, and Blanco gets in three or four big left uppercuts before Mario Yamasaki is able to get over and break up the fight. Having taken a hard knee and several powerful punches, Corassani can’t continue, and he’s awarded the fight by DQ.
The knee was for sure illegal, and this ultimately the right call. It looks at first that Corassani was on his way up, and Blanco is just the victim of unfortunate timing: then you see the replay, and you see that Corassani’s knee is actually moving off the mat due to the force of Blanco’s illegal blow, and what’s more, he has his hand on the ground as well.
Blanco could have held on another second and probably won a TKO, but getting too antsy can be the death of you in the cage. He was never a guy who would be mistaken for having a great fight IQ to start with. It looks like a pretty tough break at first, but when you see other angles, it’s hard to have much sympathy.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 6.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Luiz Dutra Jr. vs. Kiichi Kunimoto, UFC Fight Night 34
We proceed onward to two guys I genuinely remember nothing about. Kiichi Kunimoto and Luiz Dutra Jr. were welterweights both making their UFC debut on Jan. 4, 2014, the first UFC show ever held in Singapore, and an uncommonly weak show in retrospect. Tarec Saffiedine and Hyun Gyu Lim main-evented, and while that was a pretty decent fight at the time – Saffiedine, who had been Strikeforce’s welterweight champion, was debuting in the UFC – that shouldn’t main event any UFC show, ever.
So yeah, Kunimoto and Dutra are basically nobodies at this point, and they’re on the main card. Before we can find a reason to really care, it goes sideways. After a slow start, Kunimoto shoots a takedown that Dutra defends against the cage, and as Kunimoto is around Dutra’s waist, the Brazilian unloads with a series of elbows directly to the back of Kunimoto’s head that put him down.
You can tell from the first elbow that he throws that these are illegal. He then lands four more. It’s the rare Rule Break Double Whammy: not only are they to the back of the head, they’re also probably 12-to-6 elbows as well. If you’re going to get disqualified, at least get your money’s worth. Dutra was out of the UFC one fight later.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 7/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Ron Stallings vs. Joe Riggs, UFC 191
If Joe “Diesel” Riggs is remembered for anything, it’s for his run as a highly ranked UFC welterweight in the mid-2000s, where he notably: 1) missed weight for a title fight against Matt Hughes, then tapped out in the first round, and 2) got into a brawl with Nick Diaz at the hospital after beating him at UFC 57.
But Riggs actually reappeared in the UFC for a short time in the mid-2010s, one that was arguably almost as eventful as his first go-around. He had to pull out of his comeback fight because he accidentally shot himself. Then, in his actual comeback fight, he injured his neck and had to tap out less than a minute in. And his only win of that run was, yes, by disqualification.
It was the undercard of UFC 191, one of the first fights of the night: his opponent, southpaw Ron Stallings, was a very easily forgettable guy with a 1-1 record in the Octagon. Although both fighters are the same age, Stallings has way fewer miles on him – Riggs had been fighting since his late teens, and was approaching 60 professional bouts.
Even so, Riggs looks a step ahead. He’s able to take Stallings down, seemingly at will. In the opening moments of the second, he knocks Stallings to the mat with a huge left cross. He settles into Stallings’ guard, and bloodies him up with some big ground shots. Riggs is looking great! Then, the fight ends like a wet fart: as Riggs tries to moves his way through Stallings’ flailing legs to pass guard, one of Stallings’ feet grazes him.
It goes down as an illegal upkick, but it doesn’t land with any real, discernible thud. Riggs isn’t knocked out. Instead, he’s complaining that he can’t see. Here’s where it gets weird, though. Stallings’ kick does hit him with his knees down, but it gets him in the jaw, not the eye. In fact, Riggs’ right eye had been swelling up since the opening moments of the fight, when Stallings hit him with a hard left hand in one of the early exchanges: although Riggs had complained of an eyepoke at the time, it was a clean shot.
So what you’re left to assume is that Riggs saw a way to the win, and he took it. I guess you have to respect that. It sucks for Stallings, but at the end of the day, you have to be more careful with your feet. It was, in fact, an illegal kick, although you’ll see many way worse ones.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 4/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Walt Harris vs. Mark Godbeer, UFC 217
Hey look, we’re finally getting into some guys who are still in the UFC. I always look forward to watching Walt Harris, currently the No. 8 heavyweight contender in the UFC. He’s big and powerful, his fights never go the distance (one way or another), and he seems like a nice, smart guy. He’s probably never winning a world title, but you need guys like Walt Harris around. He enhances your UFC experience.
Nov. 4, 2017 was not one of Harris’ proudest moments, however. Attempting to make a quick turnaround after a submission loss to former world champ Fabricio Werdum just a month before, the “Big Ticket” stepped into the the cage in Madison Square Garden against Mark Godbeer, a tough English scrapper who’s now a pro bare-knuckle boxer.
Harris is probably one of the strongest and most physical guys at the strongest and most physical division in MMA, and he makes his presence felt early. Harris takes Godbeer down right away and asserts himself with ground-and-pound. He’s well on his way to winning the round – depending on what happens in the last minute, he might have himself a 10-8.
Godbeer scoots back to the cage and we wind up back on the feet. They clinch again, during which time Harris hits Godbeer with a knee directly in the testicles. It’s the sort of nutshot that you’ve seen happen a billion times. They’re so commonplace that they usually go unremarked upon. The only difference with this one is, as Godbeer winces in pain, turns away, and referee Blake Grice is yelling “STOP! STOP!” as he runs in to get between the two fighters, Harris blasts Godbeer with a nasty left high kick that puts the Brit down on his knees.
I’m a well-known high kick enthusiast. I even wrote a whole article ranking Mirko Cro Cop‘s high kick KOs. But this is just a moment of pure stupidity from Harris. I have no idea what he’s thinking. It’s not a bang-bang play. The referee has already very audibly been telling him to stop for a few seconds, Godbeer is walking away from him, and Grice appears to already be touching Harris by the time he winds up for the kick.
Here’s a quick rule: if the referee is making physical contact with you, just don’t do anything, alright? Walt Harris found that one out the hard way. Again, Harris has always seemed to be a pretty smart guy, but his brain was just not working on that night in MSG. A very deserved DQ.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 8/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Hector Lombard vs. C.B. Dollaway, UFC 222
Few UFC signings have excited me the way I was when the UFC grabbed Hector Lombard in 2011. Lombard was 31-2-1 when he inked his deal, the inaugural Bellator middleweight champion, a terrific physical specimen with an elite judo background and major knockout power. I really, genuinely thought he could win a UFC title.
Things didn’t turn out quite as I might have expected. Lombard had some moments in his early UFC run, but things changed when his 2015 win over Josh Burkman was overturned due to a positive steroid test. Lombard was suspended for one year, and then never won again in the UFC. Curious, huh?
The low point came on March 3, 2018, on the prelims of UFC 222 in Vegas. By this time, Lombard was already riding a four-fight losing streak and was desperately trying to keep his career alive against C.B. Dollaway, a good wrestler who served as respectable, if unexciting mid-tier middleweight in the UFC for about a decade.
The two spend the first round largely feeling each other out: Lombard was always short for the middleweight division, and most of the first round is him swinging leg kicks and trying to find a way inside Dollaway’s superior reach. At the very end of the round, he finally displays that explosive power, countering a body kick with a thunderous one-two that puts Dollaway down.
Here’s the problem: those punches were after the bell. Not by a whole lot, but by enough. Dollaway’s kick lands pretty much as the horn sounds, and you can see Dollaway let his guard down as referee Mark Smith yells “TIME!” By that point, however, the wheels are already in motion. Lombard might have gotten away with it if he had only thrown the right hand, which came milliseconds after the bell and was more of a grazing blow. But he wound up with the left and blasted Dollaway with it, putting his lights out.
The second punch is what escalates this from a borderline reaction right at the bell to some dumb shit that will definitely get you DQed. Lombard clearly heard the horn, and he should have heard Smith yelling at him. He followed through anyway. That signifies intent, and there’s no talking your way around that.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 8/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Greg Hardy vs. Allen Crowder, UFC on ESPN+ 1
Greg Hardy has always been a strange and morally indefensible science experiment for the UFC. Here you have a legitimately elite professional football player thrown out of the league in his prime because of stomach-curdling domestic violence incidents – can you turn that guy into an elite MMA fighter? More importantly, will we get canceled for doing it?
The answers: no and, apparently, no. Hardy has shown himself since to be a powerful and talented one-round fighter who gasses out when he can’t get his opponent out of the way early. In 2019, he tried to remedy that by using an inhaler between rounds during a fight with Ben Sosoli, only to find out that you can’t do that and having his win overturned.
And outside of being a truly reprehensible human being with zero endurance, he’s also proved himself to have absolutely dogshit fight IQ. Just take his official UFC debut against big Southern boy Allen Crowder, a fight between two bottom-tier heavyweights that – due to Hardy’s name recognition as a former NFL star – was actually the co-main event of a pay-per-view from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Those expecting Hardy to take the UFC world by storm were sorely disappointed. Although he started out hot, the much more experienced Crowder tied him up and outgrappled him throughout the first round. By the second, Hardy is huffing and puffing. Crowder, much fresher, is starting to dance around and talk a little shit. He puts his hands down, starts jawing, comes after a half-dead Hardy and starts swinging. The crowd starts to ignite.
Then Crowder shoots a double-leg takedown, which Hardy actually does a very nice job of defending. From there, it’s a mirror image of Yan-Sterling: Crowder is in the exact same position, with his knee on the mat, when Hardy obliterates him with an illegal knee and puts his lights out.
There’s even the same kind of pause in between. Hardy has plenty of time to observe Crowder’s knee on the mat and think to himself, “No, I should not do this. I should not knee this man in the head, because it is illegal and could be very damaging to my future prospects.” Whether he was so tired that his brain didn’t function, whether he was just that woefully unfamiliar with the rules, or whether he just didn’t care and wanted to take out this guy who had been talking trash to him, he did it anyway.
Big babyface turn for Allen Crowder, though. We were all rooting for him that night.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 8.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Michel Pereira vs. Diego Sanchez, UFC on ESPN+ 25
Man, talk about one of the weirdest fights I’ve ever seen. I feel like people have forgotten what an absolute badass Diego Sanchez was back in the day – he always had a screw loose, but Sanchez was legitimately one of the best welterweights and lightweights in the world in the mid to late 2000s, and has been in some of the most entertaining wars the sport has ever seen.
The last few years have gotten kinda sad, though. Sanchez doesn’t have the burst to compete with the best anymore, and plus he has that weird sexual tension going on with his snake oil salesman/mystic trainer, Joshua Fabia, who’s such an unqualified coach that he’s probably going to get Sanchez killed one of these days. I still want to know what the hell the deal is with that guy.
Put a Fabia-era Diego Sanchez in the ring with Michel Pereira, an incredibly talented welterweight more interested in fucking around and doing spinning kicks than actually fighting with a focused gameplan, and you have a recipe for some weird. That’s exactly what we got last February, when the two faced off in Rio Rancho, New Mexico in one of the last pre-COVID UFC cards.
The 38-year-old Sanchez looks like he’s moving in quicksand compared to the younger, bigger and much more athletic Pereira. The Brazilian lands all the best shots, and spends most of the fight backing Sanchez down and hitting him with flying knees. He hits a cool suplex on him at the end of the second round, he dances a little, it’s your typical Michel Pereira fight.
Up two rounds, Pereira just completely starts fucking around. He spends most of the first minute not even looking at Sanchez. He takes Sanchez down and tries to hit him with a standing moonsault. And with less than two minutes left, Pereira bulls Sanchez to the cage in a Thai clinch, starts throwing some knees, crumples Sanchez to the ground, and then hits him in the side of the head with another knee when Sanchez is down.
The last knee opens up a cut on the crown of Sanchez’s head, but he appears OK. Then, you can see it dawn on him: if I say I can’t continue, I’ll win! Referee Jason Herzog asks him if he wants to continue, and he says nope! See you, suckers! Diego Sanchez absconds with a win.
It’ll probably be the last win Diego Sanchez gets in his UFC career, but it’s a win all the same. And although Pereira would have won a decision, he opened the door for it by throwing a blatantly illegal knee. Basically every single point of Sanchez’s body is on the ground. But, it’s Michel Pereira – asking Michel Pereira to fight like a normal man is like asking a bird not to sing.
Dumb Bitch Rating: Michel Pereira/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Rodrigo Vargas vs. Brok Weaver, UFC on ESPN+ 25
You didn’t read that wrong. In the 21 years since Amaury Bitetti vs. Alex Andrade, there have been a total of 18 UFC disqualifications. An average of less than one per year. Two of them happened on the same night, just two fights apart, out there in Rio Rancho. Over 500 UFC events have been held since that first DQ – only one show had more than one. That it would happen at all is a statistical anomaly.
Not only did we get two disqualifications in the same night for the first time ever, they both came on illegal knees. Brok Weaver and Rodrigo Vargas were two little known lightweights – Weaver was making his UFC debut, Vargas was 0-1 in the Octagon – when they etched their little part in the UFC history books.
Vargas, always an aggressive fighter, goes right after Weaver with combinations, grabs a leg, and takes him down. Weaver threatens a pretty tight guillotine choke off his back, but Vargas escapes. They get back up, and Vargas goes after another takedown. Weaver is pushed up against the cage, in a seated position, when Vargas completely rips him with a knee that knocks Weaver out and forces an immediate stoppage.
Over the course of writing this, I watched quite a few illegal knees. Illegal knees are, by and large, the most common method of DQ in mixed martial arts: someone wants to go for the big shot, mistimes it, and hits their opponent when they still have a knee down. It’s stupid, but it does happen. Vargas’ knee, though, is one of the worst I’ve seen. That’s because Weaver’s knees weren’t down – his ass was down. He was sitting on the mat with his back on the fence. There was no mistaking that he wasn’t down. This wasn’t him trying to stand up and Vargas just getting that knee off a bit too early. Weaver was as downed as downed could be.
It’s the only illegal knee in UFC history where the point of contact with the mat was the guy’s ass. At least Vargas made it memorable.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 8.5/10 Dumb Bitch Points
Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling, UFC 259
And now here we are. By now, you’ve probably seen this one a hundred times, and plus, you’ve read my handy description up at the top there. And having gone through every DQ in UFC history, I’m a bit torn. In a vacuum, the biggest Dumb Bitch Moments I’ve seen were probably Alex Andrade completely forgetting the rules, or Wes Sims’ insane stomps to Frank Mir’s dome.
The one this DQ was most similar to was Greg Hardy-Allen Crowder, which was almost identical in terms of timing and execution. That got an 8.5/10, high on the scale, but not No. 1. But we have to consider context. You have to expect more out of a world champion. Petr Yan is, regardless of what happened last Saturday, the best bantamweight in the world. He was taking over a very entertaining fight against his top challenger. This was set up to be a win that consolidated his place at the top, shooed away all doubters, and elevated his standing in the pound-for-pound conversation.
Instead, he stared Sterling down, kneed him in the head, and became the dummy who lost his UFC championship on a DQ. No one has made a mistake like that in such a high-profile fight. It had never happened in a title fight, and it had even never happened in any sort of main event. Aside from being a really, really stupid decision, it received the biggest spotlight of any such error, and had the biggest consequences.
It may be a long time before we see anything like it again. Go on, Petr Yan. Take your prize.
Dumb Bitch Rating: 10/10 Dumb Bitch Points
The Big Fight 