Eye pokes shouldn’t have any place in MMA, yet they have disrupted countless fight cards.
Sometimes, it’s just a slight pause in the action. No big deal, right? (Tell that to the fighter who took the finger to the eye…). Other times, it completely derails a fight.
Not to sound crass, but not all eye pokes were made equal. Luckily, some of the worst fight-ending ones happen in low-stakes situations, like a prelim at the UFC APEX, where the only viewer who won’t forget the result five minutes later is an angry bettor.
But in some cases, like Saturday, it’s a situation that goes poorly. Like, very poorly.
A jam-packed Climate Pledge Arena full of over 18,000 attendees hummed out boos on Saturday evening, with some of the bolder fans throwing up a thumbs-down or middle finger to match the noise. The main event attraction of the night—a five-round clash between former champ Henry Cejudo and solid contender Song Yadong, a promising fight that remained intact on a card that was ravaged by cancelled matchups in recent weeks—came to an end due to an eye-poke.
Sure, Song was quite ahead, and in fact, he took all three rounds in the eyes of some. But Cejudo was connecting frequently and hard, too, and who says he couldn’t do something late in the fight to change things around? And no matter how good or bad someone is doing, a premature ending to a clash like that just doesn’t feel good to watch.
If baseball has rain delays, MMA has eye pokes. Except, rain delays aren’t really preventable (unless your solution is to play baseball completely indoors, an opinion that becomes radical when you realize how ugly most indoor stadiums are). Eye pokes, however, are preventable.
Many hoped that the new MMA gloves UFC debuted in June last year would potentially reduce eye pokes. But after just a few months, the gloves were ditched for the old model, which is now fully what the promotion is using again.
After years of the sport just sort of letting eye pokes rain on its parade periodically, even if it meant upsetting thousands of fans during a main event fight, the biggest push for something that could possibly reduce fouls got killed off less than a year after launch.
There seems to be a couldn’t-care-less attitude to eye pokes in the sport as if it isn’t a legitimate issue. Selfishly, fans should consider it a problem because it makes the sport less entertaining. And fighters should consider it a problem because, well, who likes getting poked in the eye?
Considering the result on Saturday night and the recent death of the not-even one-year-old glove project, I think it’s the right time to circle back to an opinion piece I wrote last April when the “new” and now-defunct glove was first unveiled.
Back then, we didn’t really know how effective the glove would be at preventing eye pokes. Neither did the UFC, it seemed, with a staffer saying they “hoped” that less eye pokes would be “a consequence of the redesign.” But either way, it wasn’t going to save everyone’s eyes.
Making gloves the be-all-end-all to the eye poke issue is silly. Equipment should obviously be designed in ways that keep athletes safe, but that’s the whole point of the rulebook, too.
The Unified Rules of MMA gives a fight’s referee discretion as to whether they will hand out a point deduction for a foul. Oftentimes, like in Saturday’s main event, an unintentional foul is simply given a warning. There’s nothing in the rulebook that stops a referee from giving yet another warning for another foul, something we have seen too many times in the sport before.
Here’s the issue: Fouls happen often because fighters aren’t scared to commit them. I don’t think they intend to, but I also think they could do more to not make such errors.
They know on a first foul they’re most likely fine. So, why not extend your fingers when measuring with your hands or parrying during stand-up exchanges? I mean, that’s what Song did not only during his foul on Saturday but also immediately after action resumed late in the third round.
It feels like beating a dead horse to discuss eye pokes, an issue that has plagued the sport of MMA for years. I mean, I wrote about this same topic only 10 months ago! But eye pokes stole the spotlight on Saturday.
As much as Song had an incredible performance and Cejudo showed quite some heart, everyone is talking about the foul. Any fight can be ruined by eye pokes since nobody in the sport cares to do anything about them. Which bout will be its next victim?
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