The UFC has been suffering from constant eye gouges, pokes, and prods since its inception, nevertheless it’s getting out of hand — in case you’ll pardon the pun.
No more evident than UFC 321, one other stray set of fingers resulted ultimately of an anticipated heavyweight title fight.
The newest victim: Tom Aspinall. Putting his undisputed crown on the road for the primary time, the Brit was gouged badly by challenger Ciryl Gane — who pleaded innocence despite splaying his fingers in his opponent’s direction before the stoppage.
So with that in mind, let’s do a deep dive into easy methods to stop this persistent issue — which has already struck down two separate essential events this 12 months.
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The attention poke problem itself
Eye pokes have been a relentless in mixed martial arts for years — but more so, the UFC for a long time at this point. And the problem is just getting worse.
Long gone are the times wherein gouging of eyes was seen as an unsportsmanlike, albeit legal technique within the promotion’s ancient infancy.
Nevertheless, this 12 months alone, Aspinall vs. Gane joins a previous essential event in Seattle between Henry Cejudo and Song Yadong, which ended in consequence of pokes.
And countless other examples are available, namely Jeremy Stephens’ first of two fights with Yair Rodriguez, with a 15-second poke causing a riot in Mexico City after the dubious foul.
Most of the time, if a poke doesn’t stop a fight in its immediate tracks, it severely impacts the victim — almost detrimentally.
1. Immediate point deduction
This one is self-explanatory. Fighters who commit this foul must be immediately hit with some extent deduction for that round.
Not a warning, a severe warning, or the rest; a direct deduction of their point rating for that round, and let’s see if this plague on the game stays prevalent.
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Over the weekend, credit to Marc Goddard and Wealthy Mitchell, who enforced the ruleset with immediate point deductions for illegal punches in addition to fence grabs, respectively.
But most of the time, even these fouls are met with one, if not two, if not three warnings before some extent is diminished.
2. A correct glove change
Last 12 months, the UFC introduced a newly designed glove. But beyond the bells and whistles of a flowery color palette for championship fights, Contender Series bouts and the Road to UFC brackets, little seems to have been factored into the design in terms of reducing eye pokes.
And we will’t just ignore the undeniable fact that higher gloves — particularly in design are already available on the market. For instance, naturally curved gloves from the likes of Pride FC and DREAM have been spoken of tirelessly in much more tiring discourse.
Even the now topsy-turvy Bellator MMA outfit managed to introduce a ‘PowerLock’ design in tandem with Everlast back in 2014, in a bid to scale back fighter hand injuries. And paired with a curved design, those mitts appear to have a bonus in that specific criterion.
3. Fight purse fines
Within the likes of Pride FC and Bushido, the promotion’s officials were equipped with yellow and red cards in a bid to stop stalling.
And leading on from that concept, the issuing of a yellow card and eventual red card led to a reported $10,000 fight purse deduction attributable to inactivity of their fights.
If the promotion adopted this method in a bid to scale back eye pokes, it’s interesting to see if successful to a fighter’s coffers could curb this bedevilled issue.