White: There should be harsher penalties for eye pokes
“If you poke a guy in the eye, you have to lose the round or something. There has to be harsher penalties and it will make guys and girls keep their hands closed.”
There are moments in our sport when it looks as if the UFC has signed Moe Howard from Team 3 Stooges.
Friday night at The Ultimate Fighter Finale, K.J. Noons inadvertently poked Daron Cruickshank in the eye. Referee “Big” John McCarthy warned Noons. Then K.J. Noons inadvertently poked Daron Cruickshank in the eye again, and McCarthy warned Noons again. Then Cruickshank couldn’t continue, the bout was halted, and a No Contest declared.
Right now, it just looks like he needs surgery to sew up the tear on the bottom half of the eyelid, said UFC president Dana White. Hopefully there’s no damage to the eye.
Cruickshank won the first round. If he had won, he would be known as the guy who had FIVE fights in the UFC in 2014, winning four of them. Instead he is the guy who got eye poked.
Cruickshank will need surgery for a torn tear duct. The fighters didn’t get to fight. The fans were robbed of what appeared to be one of the best fights of the night. The promotion didn’t get a fight. In short, eye pokes are a disaster.
The gouge suffered by Francisco Rivera at the hands of Urijah Faber was even more serious. He needs surgery for a torn retina. That is a potentially career-ending injury.
At Friday’s TUF 20 post-fight press conference, White expressed frustration at the spate of eye pokes.
“I don’t know what to do about eye pokes other than the refs telling them to close their hands, and there has to be harsher penalties,” said White. “If you poke a guy in the eye, you have to lose the round or something. There has to be harsher penalties and it will make guys and girls keep their hands closed.”
In May of 2013, White was quoted by MMAJunkie as telling ESPN 710-AM in Los Angeles that a new glove was being developed.
We actually have started to work on a new glove that actually curves your hand, said White. Like the glove is curved like a ‘U,’ so you can still open your hand, but your fingers don’t point straight out.
Everlast has developed a new glove for Bellator that is reported to have dramatic results in terms of hand breaking, which is another problem for the sport. The second bout to ever use the Everlast glove had an eye poke, leading the bout to be declared NC in just 18 seconds. There is no news on whether or not that glove has over all seen a reduction in eye injuries.
Everyone loses with eye pokes. The injured fighter regularly has to have surgery, neither fighter gets a win, the fans lose a fight, the sport looks clown like, and the promotion loses a fight and they are in the fight business. Referees need to warn and penalize fighters more severely, and the UFC should accelerate development of a new glove of the type White referenced last year.