In 2021, notable figures in the MMA community, such as UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and City Kickboxing head coach Eugene Bareman, called for legal changes and 'coward punch laws'.
[4][5] Noting that 91 people had died in Australia in the previous fourteen years from brain trauma as a result of being hit, a media campaign was launched to refer to them as coward punches.
[11] In December 2017, a Sydney man named Hugh Garth became the first person to be sentenced under the new "one punch" law to ten years for an assault causing death in 2014.
In February 2018, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton ordered the deportation of New Zealander Caleb Maraku using a character test provision of the Migration Act 1958.
Maraku had been convicted of a one punch attack against another youth in Queensland's Gold Coast in November 2017; receiving a 12-month probationary sentence for assault and being ordered to pay a A$361 fine.
The bill was debated on 17 June 2020 but was defeated due to opposition from the incumbent Labour-led coalition government, which contended that New Zealand already had legislation dealing with one-punch attacks.
[15][21] Following Vake's death from his injuries, the conservative justice advocacy group Sensible Sentencing Trust sponsored a petition calling for tougher laws dealing with "one punch" attacks.