Don’t Kick Your Opponent in the Ass… Especially if He’s Built Out of Ukrainian Muscle… An MMA Fighter Broke His Toe After Accidentally Booting His Rival Up the Backside…
Unless you have a foot fetish – and if you do we don’t judge you-you probably don’t think much about your toes. However, those ten digits are so important for your movement, which is incredibly important for martial artists. Toes give you balance, grip, and occasionally even give you a longer reach with your kicks.
However, they are also very vulnerable to getting damaged. We’ve all walked into something, banged our toes and jumped around in pain. Bones those small can break very easily, as one unfortunate MMA fighter found out in Ukraine the other night.
Watch the clip below of how Yuriy Protsenko ended up losing after shattering his toe off his opponent’s rump. Yep, he lost via backside kick. That’s an Artem Lobov GOAT move right there.
Agony
Yuriy Protsenko is a Ukrainian MMA fighter currently fighting for MMAPL in his home country. As you can probably tell by the generous gut that he’s carrying, he’s a super-heavyweight, walking around at 295 lbs. While these dudes will gas out quicker than you can say cheeseburger, they are also capable of KOing people with death star power.
Anyway, he was taking on a fellow monster in Kevin Szaflarski and decided that the best way to start the fight was with a brutal leg kick. Makes sense doesn’t it? Slow the big beast down and then catch him with a brutal hand. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way for Protzenko.
He totally miskicked and ended up bashing his toe off Szaflarski’s rear. It takes him a second or two to register that he’s in agony as he hops away, and lost via medical stoppage.
Pain
Toes are very vulnerable in MMA and can get injured in the most innocuous ways. Above you can see South Korea’s Seung Min Yeo shatter his toe while trying to grab Yamato Nishikawa’s shorts. That’s karma. More famously, former UFC middleweight and current US marine Tim Kennedy once infamously suffered a career-threatening injury when he caught his toe on training mats while sparring in the gym back in 2012. He explained:
“I was sparring and my left toe slipped between a space in the mats, and I threw a hard left hook and my toe stayed in the tiny little space while my foot continued to move,” he said. “It pretty much tore off my left toe. I had to go and get surgery to put it back on, and now my toe is a good-looking toe.”
https://twitter.com/betmybookie/status/1079203444488003584
Weapon
More recently we saw another freak injury involving a toe when Megan Anderson accidentally toe-poked Cat Zingano and walked away with a controversial win. It came via a kick that resulted in the Australian’s toe going straight into Zingano’s eye leaving her unable to continue.
Technically there was nothing illegal about the situation. First of all, it’s very difficult to control your toes, unlike your fingers, so it was just a freak occurrence. Some fans believe that it should have been ruled a no-contest as it is illegal to attack the eyes, however, you could also argue that if a knuckle grazed an eyelid it would have the same effect and be totally above board too.