Oblique kicks are once again at the center of an MMA safety debate, and Aljamain Sterling is basically telling everyone to pump the brakes. The controversy kicked off after California State Athletic Commission executive Andy Foster called for the nasty leg kicks to be banned, arguing that the injuries they cause can leave fighters sidelined for way too long. Sterling, though, isn’t exactly buying that logic.

Foster recently pointed to Nursulton Ruziboev’s gruesome injury as a prime example. At UFC Fight Night in Paris, Michael ‘Venom’ Page landed a perfectly timed oblique kick straight into Ruziboev’s knee, causing a serious hyperextension and joint injury. The fighter was then hospitalized and needed immediate surgery.

But when Ariel Helwani brought up Foster’s argument, ‘Funk Master’ wasn’t having any of it. The former UFC bantamweight champion questioned why recovery time from a leg injury is being treated as the major concern when MMA fighters are already exposed to potentially permanent brain damage.

“He’s got to stop with this bulls—. It takes too long to recover? I mean, how do you recover from CTE? The f— are we talking about?” Sterling said in the interview.

Aljamain Sterling wasn’t done there. The former champ then shifted the focus to the punishment fighters already take from perfectly legal head strikes, arguing that officials should probably get the existing rules under control before creating a whole new set of them.

“We’re getting head kick with no shin pads on,” he continued. “We’re getting elbowed to the dome multiple times because referees want to watch a murder scene in real time happen.

“And just like I just saw someone else get kneed in the head and the ref staring at him, he’s staring at this guy’s knee on the ground getting punted in the head.”

And that’s basically where ‘Funk Master’ draws the line. Instead of immediately banning another technique, he believes referees need to do a better job enforcing the rules already on the books, while fighters also need to take some responsibility for protecting themselves.

“Can we fix accountability for following the rules first before we start trying to add new rules and change stuff?” he asked. “An oblique kick? Move your leg out the f—— way? How about that? How about you practice the technique of moving your leg out the way? It’s part of the game man.”

There’s a reason oblique kicks keep finding themselves in the middle of these debates: when they land clean, they can do some serious damage.

Jon Jones made the technique a regular part of his game during his championship run, using lateral and oblique kicks against the likes of Daniel Cormier, Stipe Miocic, and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson.

Shavkat Rakhmonov also spent more than a year on the sidelines after suffering a similar injury that was allegedly caused by an oblique kick from Ian Garry.

And while Aljamain Sterling isn’t exactly ready to jump on the ban bandwagon, Dana White has admitted that Andy Foster’s voice carries plenty of weight when it comes to the issue.

“Yeah. Listen, he’s the most powerful guy in the commission anywhere in the world. And, yeah, we don’t disagree,” he said at a recent Contender Series press conference.

‘Funk Master,’ however, believes MMA is inherently dangerous and that singling out one damaging technique ignores the bigger picture.

“I think we just being a little too drastic. ‘Oh, it’s a nasty injury,’” he continued. “Well, I see a guy get flatlined with a head kick and just go completely like a sack of potatoes gets dropped. That’s pretty scary, too.”

Aljamain Sterling then brought up another recent scare that had nothing to do with oblique kicks: the Raoni Barcelos incident at UFC Vegas 121. In the main event, the Brazilian fighter went limp, lost consciousness, and remained unresponsive on the canvas for several minutes before eventually being stretchered out of the Meta APEX and taken to a Level 1 trauma center.

For ‘Funk Master,’ moments like that are simply part of the brutal reality of MMA, and trying to eliminate every dangerous technique isn’t necessarily the answer.

“What happened to Raoni Barcellos, pretty scary, too,” he added. “This is a scary sport. We know what we signed up for. I mean, you guys want to watch us play paddle ball? The f—?”

The 37-year-old isn’t the only fighter refusing to get on board with Foster’s idea. Thiago Santos knows the ugly side of oblique kicks better than most, having felt their damage firsthand, but even the former UFC title challenger doesn’t think the technique belongs on the banned list.

Thiago Santos joins Aljamain Sterling to reject the call to ban oblique kicks

Thiago Santos knows exactly how nasty those kicks can be. At UFC 239 in July 2019, he stepped into the Octagon against Jon Jones with an already compromised right knee. ‘Bones’ then repeatedly attacked Santos’ left knee with lateral kicks throughout the five-round war.

Somehow, ‘Marreta’ gutted it out until the final bell, but the damage was already done. He lost the fight by split decision and eventually needed surgery on both knees, keeping him out of action for more than a year.

Even after making his return, Santos never quite looked like the same explosive fighter who had earned a shot at Jones’ title. But despite going through all of that himself, Santos still doesn’t see oblique kicks as something that needs to be singled out.

In his view, they’re no harder to defend against than plenty of other legal techniques that can cause serious damage.

“I personally don’t see the need to ban oblique kicks,” Santos said in Portuguese during an interview with Guilherme Cruz. “I don’t see it as an illegal technique, a technique that’s that difficult to defend from.

Just like Alajamain Sterling, the Brazilian also believes fighters have defensive options available to them before an oblique kick lands.

With both Aljamain Sterling and Thiago Santos pushing back against Andy Foster’s proposal, the oblique-kick debate is starting to boil down to one big question: are these kicks an unnecessary danger, or are they simply another weapon fighters need to know how to deal with?

‘Funk Master’ isn’t exactly known for making oblique kicks a huge part of his own game, but he’ll be back in action against Kevin Vallejos in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night: Qatar on November 21, 2026.

And who knows? If Sterling suddenly starts firing off a few oblique kicks of his own, this whole debate could get even more interesting.