KSW 122: KSW rejects El Ouassaidi protest, upholds Zając's first-round KO win

The result of KSW 122's catchweight bout stands. KSW turned down Salim El Ouassaidi's protest on Oct. 15, five days after Sergiusz Zając stopped him in Rzeszów, Poland, so the first-round knockout stays on the record.

El Ouassaidi's team argued that strikes to the back of the head influenced the finish. To test that, head referee Tomasz Bronder convened a panel with Paulina Świder and Łukasz Bosacki and gave them footage from every available KSW camera. KSW said its reviewers also officiate at UFC and IMMAF events.

The three did not fully agree on how clear the evidence was. Bronder found the strikes legal and said referee Aleh Miliakou was properly positioned nearby. Bosacki backed him on the finishing elbows and stressed that the protected target is not the entire rear of the head. Świder was more cautious: replay made exact contact hard to establish because the prohibited area is small, but she saw no unequivocal basis to override the referee's closer view.

The rules explain why location mattered. KSW prohibits blows to the back of the head, neck and spine. The restricted strip of the head runs from the crown toward the occipital junction with a one-inch tolerance on either side, so an elbow landing behind the ear is not automatically illegal. The rulebook also makes the referee the sole arbiter of a bout and the only person who can stop it.

The protest sits alongside a separate penalty. The bout had a 95-kilogram limit, and Zając weighed 97.6. KSW took 50 percent of his purse and removed a point at the start of round one. El Ouassaidi was listed at 95. Those sanctions were about the weight miss, not the strike allegation.

KSW's event report describes early leg kicks and pressure from Zając, then knees and elbows as El Ouassaidi looked for a takedown, and punches on the ground to finish at 1:09. With the protest closed, no further appeal step has been reported.