Following his fight at KSW 76, Tom Breese & his team filed an official complaint regarding the referees decision to end the contest citing an alleged illegal blow to the back of the head.

As a result, there was a fully independant review of the decision and upon the panels examination of the fight footage the result will stand as a TKO win for Pawel Pawlak.

Below are the findings:

In response to the protest filed after the fight between Tom Breese and Paweł Pawlak at KSW 75

Following KSW 76 which took place on November 12th in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Tom Breese’s team filed in an official protest regarding the result of the fight between the Englishman and Paweł Pawlak and the possible termination of the fight due to an alleged illegal blow to the back of the head.

In response to the protest, Tomasz Bronder, the head judge of KSW, established an international commission which consists of judges working at events organized among others by UFC, Bellator, Cage Warriors or IMMAF. Apart from the head judge Tomasz Bronder, the commission includes Rich Mitchell (England) and Michal Bell (USA). All the judges analyzed available replays of the sequence that concluded the fight:

Rich Mitchell

In the camera angles provided, I would judge the initial elbow to be a legal blow. Thereafter all punches are either obscured or appear to land in legal target areas. After watching the video multiple times slowed down to 0.25x on an already slowed video, I cannot see a foul blow.

Without a clear foul, you cannot overturn the win and the referee's decision should stand. The referee is in prime position, and he partially obscures every other camera angle, rendering them inadequate to make a contrary assessment.

Michael Bell

It looks like the first elbow may have hit the back of the head. The second one could’ve hit the back of the head, but the rest of the blows looked legal. However, it would be hard to overturn this call. Only way to overturn it would be if you thought the first blow hurt the fighter bad. But the fighter protested immediately after it was stopped, so he seemed able to continue fighting.

Tomasz Bronder

Having watched the video materials, I cannot unequivocally and without any doubt state that the first elbow hit the back of the head as it is defined in MMA. If I am not completely certain, I cannot judge it as a foul much like the referee inside the cage. It is also worth emphasizing that during briefings before fights referees inform fighters that only the “stop” command can in fact lead to stopping the fight and in this particular instance it was not given after the first blows. Even if a fighter believes that there was a foul and he or she is still conscious, he or she should adhere to the “protect yourself at all times” rule. Tom was still conscious which is proved by the fact that after the stoppage he informed the referee about the blow which he considered illegal. Since the referee did not perceive any foul and thus did not stop the fight because of it and Tom Breese was neither actively defending himself nor reacting to the “protect yourself” command, the referee had no other choice than to stop the fight and declare the victory of Paweł Pawlak by technical knockout.

Based on the three opinions above, the commission decided to sustain the result of the fight between Paweł Pawlak and Tom Breese.

Signed by:

Tomasz Bronder
Ritch Mitchel
Michael Bell