So there we are in the UFC on FOX 28 main event, looking like we’re headed for a clear, unambiguous finish. Jeremy Stephens had just dropped Josh Emmett with a long left hook, and he seemed to be no more than a couple follow-up strikes away from sealing the deal and heading for the showers.

But those meddlesome MMA gods, they weren’t about to let us off that easy. Instead they whispered in Stephens’ ear.

Hey, see how Emmett’s knee is totally and clearly down on the mat, thereby making him a grounded opponent? Wouldn’t this be a great time to haul off and knee him in the head?

Here’s where it all gets fuzzy. While there’s bound to be some disagreement over whether or not he succeeded, seems pretty obvious what Stephens was trying to do.

After a couple elbow strikes that clocked Emmett (13-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) in the back of the head, Stephens (28-14 MMA, 15-13 UFC) got up and aimed his knee directly at Emmett’s skull. If he missed, it was by a matter of millimeters, but obviously what he wanted to do was execute a brutal and completely illegal strike.

How Stephens thought this was a good idea to begin with is anybody’s guess. His post-fight remarks almost make you wonder if he completely misunderstood the grounded opponent rule, which, if so, would be a damning indictment of either him or the sport or both, since a guy with over 40 pro fights should at least know that you can’t knee someone in the head when they’re kneeling on the mat, regardless of what their hands are doing.

Then again, maybe he knows exactly what’s allowed, which is pretty much anything as long as it’s in the heat of the moment.

We’ve seen this before. In these crucial moments where it seems like the fight may end at any second, referees are reluctant to intervene unless it’s to call the whole thing off. You can almost understand why.

If referee Dan Miragliotta had stepped in when Stephens’ knee either glanced off Emmett’s skull or breezed just past it, he would have altered the fight, albeit necessarily. Even if he’d only stopped it to warn Stephens about an attempted foul. Even if the fight had resumed quickly. Any pause that allowed Emmett to regain his wits could have changed the course of the fight.

Maybe that would have been warranted in this case, but Miragliotta didn’t do it right away (though he seemed tempted), and a few seconds later it was too late – and anyway, the fight was over.

It was a mass of swift, violent confusion, and that confusion almost always favors the breaker of the rules rather than the breakee.

We have rules in this sport, but we’d rather not have to enforce them. We want fights to be decided by fighters, ideally without help from referees or judges. Point deductions, disqualifications, that all feels a little uncomfortably interventionist for us. And when the fog of combat gets a little too thick, our impulse is to throw up our hands and just plow straight ahead to the finish.

That impulse continues even after the fight. In the arguments that followed both on TV and on social media, a familiar reasoning took hold.

That knee didn’t land. And even if it did, it just barely landed. Besides, it wasn’t the deciding blow. And anyway, aren’t these really mere technicalities? It’s a fight, man. And Stephens was the better fighter.

If your goal is to avoid any complicated questions with potentially unsatisfying answers, then sure, that works. It just doesn’t give the fighters much peace of mind, since they have to lock themselves in a cage with another human without knowing if or how the rules will be enforced.

This is not a new problem for MMA, but it is a persistent one. Either we don’t mind, or we don’t care enough to fix it. Either way, the result is a sport where only suckers follow the rules – and only fools expect to be protected by them.

For complete covearge of UFC on FOX 28, check out the UFC Events section of the site.