Joe Schilling just suffered one of the strangest losses in MMA history.
The longtime combat sports veteran took on fellow kickboxing veteran and cagefighting newcomer Donegi Abena at PFL Brussels on Saturday, but the bout barely began before an Abena foul led to a truly bizarre scene.
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Shortly after the opening bell, Abena found himself in top position over Schilling and he made the poor decision to attempt an illegal headbutt. The blow did not appear to connect or do any significant damage, but Schilling loudly reacted to the foul, drawing the attention of referee Mike Beltran. A furious Schilling stood up and cursed at Abena, eventually calling for the fight to be stopped.
See the entire confusing sequence below.
With Schilling ready to exit the arena, it was ruled that Abena was the winner by technical knockout due to “a fighter not wanting to continue.” An official bout time was not announced, but the clock was paused 37 seconds into the opening round when the incident occurred.
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It’s unclear why Schilling was particularly incensed by Abena’s underhanded technique, but he let everyone in hearing range have it. After Beltran paused the action, Schilling stalked around the cage, shouting, “F*ck this motherf*cker! F*ck that! Headbutts?”
Beltran separated the fighters and immediately penalized Abena, docking him a point on the scorecards. However, Schilling signaled multiple times that he was done fighting, much to Beltran and Abena’s confusion. The situation appeared to settle down, but Schilling again caused chaos by lying on his back, indicating that he was willing to return to bottom position despite Beltran giving no indication the fighters should be reset on the floor.
With Abena back on top, Schilling then complained about not being granted his original arm positioning and again stood up and called for the contest to be called off.
“No, no,” Schilling said. “He f*cking fouled and now you’re going to give me a bad position? Fight’s over. Hey, stop the fight. Stop the fight.”
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Schilling repeated to Beltran multiple times that the fight was over and Beltran eventually obligeed, leading to Schilling, still fuming, making his way out of the cage and to the back.
With the loss, Schilling falls to 4-7 as an MMA fighter. This was his first bout under MMA rules since 2019.
