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The story
A European kickboxing organization has signaled plans to ban the “calf kick,” a technique that repeatedly targets an opponent’s shin. The calf kick is known for being devastatingly effective — landing one can damage the leg’s nerves so badly that the opponent can’t even plant their foot properly — but critics also note it looks unremarkable and can make fights monotonous. On 5ch, a thread about the news split into two camps: those calling it “unfair to ban a technique just because it works,” and those arguing that since it “just looks bad and turns matches into an endurance contest,” banning it is the right call for entertainment’s sake. The discussion expanded into where to draw the line with low kicks, and whether other dangerous techniques should be banned too.
What people said
but that just proves how effective the move is.
Makes you wonder what the guys who get all smug throwing it even think fighting sports are for.
Unremarkable-looking but they hurt like hell.
Isn't taekwondo the one where low kicks are banned?
Calf = shin
So basically a shin kick.
Get hit enough and your leg goes numb — you can't even stand properly, let alone keep fighting. That's why it became a problem.
Couldn't the answer just be "then get good enough to land it"?
Calf kicks hit below the knee.
Ban attacks using the lower body.
It's never going to look like Baki.
Trying to block it tends to backfire into even bigger damage anyway, so it's just not fun to watch.
Then let's skip the punching and settle it by talking.
Sure, you could win by kicking someone in the groin too, but is that really okay?
That really hurts, I can confirm.
Hearing "ow ow ow, KO!" because of a leg injury is just a letdown.
Honestly, turning violence into entertainment via combat sports is too barbaric for this day and age to begin with.
Maybe martial arts training should only be allowed for military and police personnel.
But somewhere along the line, MMA became the mainstream one instead.
And here I thought ground-game stalemates were boring enough that MMA wouldn't catch on.
Wrecking a fighter in a single match just isn't right.
Must've been some tone-deaf, boring fighter with zero sense of the room.
Middle and high kicks only.
If you want a combat sport that's half-baked on both popularity and strength, that's kickboxing lol
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The calf kick is a technique that repeatedly strikes the opponent’s shin to neurologically impair their ability to walk or plant their foot, and it has drawn growing attention as it’s seen more often in recent MMA bouts and tournaments. While highly dangerous, when it lands it tends to produce one-sided matches where a fighter’s leg simply gets destroyed, and there’s a persistent criticism that its unremarkable look makes it “lack excitement as entertainment.” Where opinions in the thread split was between judging the technique on its effectiveness as a fighting tool versus its value as a spectator sport. Alongside voices calling it “unfair to kill off an effective technique,” there were objections that “banning it while the boundary with low kicks stays vague doesn’t make sense,” and the discussion extended to some extreme opinions that all attacks to the lower body should be banned outright. Which organization set this rule, and for which tournament, was not specified in the thread, so it’s worth noting that the concrete background and official announcement details remain unclear.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “[Bad News] European Kickboxing Organization to Ban Calf Kick.”
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