{"id":442371,"date":"2026-05-24T01:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/442371\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T01:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:40:09","slug":"joe-schilling-quits-on-mma-return-after-headbutt-against-donegi-abena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/442371\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Schilling quits on MMA return after headbutt against Donegi Abena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joe Schilling quit from his PFL light-heavyweight fight against Donegi Abena following a headbutt in the opening round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Abena attempted to headbutt Schilling 37 seconds into the contest in Brussels as they were grappling on the canvas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The strike missed as Schilling, fighting for the first time in almost seven years, reacted sharply to move out of the way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Suriname&#8217;s Abena, making his MMA debut, was subsequently deducted a point by referee Mike Beltran as the American referee decided against disqualfying Abena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The referee tried to restart the fight from the position at which it had been paused &#8211; with the American on his back &#8211; but the 42-year-old protested and then verbally tapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Schilling quit from his PFL light-heavyweight fight against Donegi Abena following a headbutt in the opening round.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-442371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}