Jorge Masvidal may or may not be returning to the UFC in the near future, but he’s shared his thoughts on one particular foul that has plagued MMA for years: eye pokes.
Nary a UFC event goes by without multiple eye pokes. They’ve become more common than low blows and accidental headbutts, and can be more damaging. Just ask Tom Aspinall, the UFC heavyweight champion still recovering months after being poked twice by Ciryl Gane last fall.
On the Deep Waters show on Paramount+, Masvidal recently suggested one solution: do what Japan does, with yellow cards, point deductions, and even fines.
“Go Japan style,” Masvidal said on the show (h/t MMA Fighting). “Hit him with the yellow card right away. Pay deductions and points. I’ve been eye poked in a fight two different times and one of them actually stuck with me for, like, three weeks. Colby [Covington’s] b*tch ass f*cking dug his nails in my eye and that was, like, three weeks later I was still seeing spots and it was bad and my eye was swollen, I had to go to the doctor to get it checked. I had to get medication, antibiotics on my eyes, it sucked. It happened with [Lorenz] Larkin as well and it was really, really bad. Both eye pokes were horribly bad.”
RIZIN, the successor to PRIDE in Japan, does employ yellow cards which result in both a point deduction and fine. A red card can be issued in the case of repeated fouls, meaning the offending athlete is disqualified. It’s one of the ways Japanese MMA continues to separate itself from its western counterpart, which includes fighters who miss weight automatically being subjected to a “no contest” if they win, or if the fight ends in a draw (should they lose, the loss stands).
Masvidal, meanwhile, feels that the financial penalty will be more effective than points. “Hit them where it hurts because I’m a fighter and you immediately say anything about my paycheck, I’m going to be like, ‘Oh, you’re saying if I’m late here I’m going to get deducted?’ I’ll never be late,” Masvidal said. “But if you don’t say that, I’ll show up whenever I want, you know?”
He also wants to ensure that the victims of eye pokes see the money, not local athletic commissions. “[The money goes] to the other fighter. Not to no commission, not no damn commission. I’m done with these commissions getting exchange, all to the guy that got poked in the eye. Everybody’s robbing us, man.”
The UFC has in the past attempted to modify its gloves, introducing a change at UFC 302 that was in part rolled out to reduce eye pokes. Months later, with questions about dwindling knockouts and the effectiveness of the gloves swirling, the promotion reverted back to their previous design.
