(Props: kevinjd)

So let’s run this thing down, from the beginning.

During the first round of Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley‘s fight last Saturday at UFC 113, Paul Daley fires a knee to Josh Koscheck’s dome while Kos’s knees were clearly in the "down" position. Kos does his best to call attention to the foul before slumping over on the mat. He covers his face in apparent pain. When he removes his glove, there’s blood on the bridge of his nose that didn’t seem to be there before. The crowd boos Daley’s dirtiness…until they see the replay, which shows (from multiple angles) that at worst, Daley’s knee grazed Koscheck’s hair. Sure, the knee shouldn’t have been thrown in the first place, but Josh had just been exposed as a faker. Now the crowd was booing him. After the controversial fouls in his ugly match against Anthony Johnson, Koscheck’s credibility was officially shot.

Following the Daley fight, he stood by his claim that he’d been kneed illegally — or at least hit in the face by something. It could have been a fist, actually. At the time, this seemed like a pathetic explanation, because if it was a punch, why would Kos try so hard to draw the foul, and besides, hadn’t we just seen the replay of this mysterious illegal blow like 20 times? Forget it. Josh Koscheck was a liar and our minds were made up.

Okay. Are you ready to have your minds blown?



(Props: Neo Cyrus)

The gif above shows the entire illegal-knee sequence. What we were shown on the UFC 113 broadcast, over and over again, was only the left-knee that Daley threw at the very end, which clearly missed Koscheck’s head. What we were not shown was the right-knee that immediately preceded it (watch closely), which connects and rocks Koscheck’s head back. That’s what Josh Koscheck was referring to when he said he got nailed by something in that scramble. Koscheck did his "come on, man!" routine as soon as he had an opportunity — unfortunately, it came after a knee that missed, and the replay editing was not kind to him.

Is Josh Koscheck as bad as a soccer player when it comes to overplaying fouls? Yes, possibly. But he actually did get hit by an illegal knee in his fight against Paul Daley. You can still boo him for being an asshole in general, but at least give him the common courtesy of not calling him a liar. Sorry, Josh.

Update: From another angle, it looks like Kos may have just smacked into the right-knee on his own…