UFC CEO Dana White has a message for fans hoping the UFC can magically erase eye pokes from MMA, it’s never going to happen.
Eye pokes have derailed fights for years, and despite new gloves, rule tweaks, and commission debates, the problem keeps resurfacing. The recent heavyweight title fight between Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 is a perfect example. Gane poked the champion in both eyes, forcing a no-contest and sparking another round of complaints across the sport.
Speaking on the Triggernometry podcast, White kept it brutally honest.
“We will definitely figure something out,” White said. “It’s like bad decisions, bad referee calls, I mean it’s never going to go away. It’s always going to be here.
“It’s not like we’re going to create some f*cking invention that nobody can get eye poked again. It’s just not going to happen.”
White believes the real solution lies with athletic commissions — not glove designs and that harsher penalties could make fighters more aware of their hand positioning.
“Getting poked in the eye by anybody isn’t good,” White said. “We’ve messed around with gloves, we’ve tried to do all these things. I think the big talk is if there’s harder penalties for doing it, guys would be a lot more conscious of it.
“Because you always have these guys where you’re throwing punches and I’m blocking your punches [with my hands out and fingers extended] and then you get a guy that reaches out to catch something and the other guy is coming forward, it’s going to happen. It doesn’t happen as much as it seems. I can’t remember the number … it’s like a hundred or something eye pokes over thousands of fights.”
After UFC 321, Aspinall faced heat online for not being able to continue, something White feels was unfair even if the heavyweight champ took it to heart more than necessary.
“You don’t ever want a fight to end like that,” White said. “Then the problem is and I think Tom took it a little too hard but you’ve got all of these people [saying] ‘he quit!’ It’s easy to sit on the couch or sit in the chair and watch somebody get poked in the eye and go ‘oh [you quit]’ or get punched and knocked out. You go home, you recover, you get back in the gym and we get back out and start fighting again.”
However, no matter how fans feel, White remains firm fouls will always exist. The UFC can minimize them, but it can’t eliminate them.
“We will definitely figure something out,” White said. “It’s like bad decisions, bad referee calls, I mean it’s never going to go away. It’s always going to be here.
“It’s not like we’re going to create some f*cking invention that nobody can get eye poked again. It’s just not going to happen.”
