Rousimar Palhares is recently in hot water following his mixed martial arts World Series of Fighting 22 win against contender Jake Shields.
Last Saturday, Palhares was able to successfully hold on to his WSOF welterweight title against Jake Shields. However, the champion’s strategy into winning seemed doubtful to the promotional officials and Shields’ team. The most controversial part during the fight was the successive eye gouging that greatly affected the dynamics of the fight halfway into the second round. Palhares was dominated by Shields but the contender lost by submission which ended the round.
After the fight, Shields complained his vision was blurry so he immediately rushed to the hospital. Tare Azim, Shields’ manager, uploaded a picture online showing the damage that Palhares did to his client. Azim claimed that the eye damage Shields had was definitely from the eye-poking incident that Palhares did. Shields, on the other hand, did not even hesitate to call Palhares’ strategies as “absolutely blatant cheating”. He even called the champion a “dirty, dirty fighter” in a recent interview after the fight.
Palhares vehemently denied the Shields’ allegations.
In a recent interview, Palhares said that he was just protecting himself. “He put his head on my nose. I just put my hand there to protect myself. I did not put my fingers in his eyes. You can see it at the time,” he added.
Palhares was also accused of not stopping his fight-winning kimura when Shields obviously had submitted. The champion claimed that he did not hold Shields’ arm after the tap. “I did not hold his arm (after the tap). The [referee] said to me before the fight, ‘just go out there, if I put my hand on you, stop.’ And when he put his hand on me, I stopped. I stopped. Sometimes in the fight, it’s hard, it’s difficult to feel something. When it felt it, I [stopped],” he explained.
Even though Palhares kept on insisting that he had done nothing wrong, WSOF is not going to take his side. Ali Abdel-Aziz, the vice president and matchmaker of WSOF, released a statement stating that the complaints Shields filed were valid and they are going to make the necessary actions about the incident this coming Tuesday.
WSOF’s vice president previously hinted that there’s a chance Palhares will be stripped off his MMA WSOF welterweight title and will be suspended for his actions. This is mainly because of Palhares’ numerous accounts of violations in the past.
During the interview last Saturday, Abdel-Aziz admitted that he thinks Palhares is a nice person, but he thinks the fighter has problems. “I think he has problems, and we had an amazing event, and he didn’t have to hold (the submission late). He didn’t have to hold at all because he won, he tapped him. Let him go. Let the guy go,” he added.
Palhares’ numerous controversies had damaged his reputation these last few years. Unfortunately, even though he is one of the best submission fighters in his MMA division, his repeated violations might cost him his career.