Wang Cong isn’t exactly letting her UFC 332 title loss slide without looking back at what went wrong. The Chinese contender believes an eye poke during her fight with Natalia Silva messed with her vision, threw off her rhythm, and ultimately played a role in her coming up short in her first UFC title shot.

“Thank you for supporting my friends. The game is lost,” Wang said in an Instagram video in Mandarin. “What a pity. I have some regrets. Then because of the first game, my eye was poked in the second half.

“The line of sight was blocked, and then wait until later to slow down. It’s too slow to enter. Where to fall, get up. Go back and summarize yourself. Come on and try again.”

The women’s flyweight title fight went the full 25 minutes at UFC 332, with the Brazilian walking away with a unanimous decision win by scores of 49-46, 48-47, and 48-47. Wang Cong started finding her groove as the fight went on, with one judge giving her the third round and another scoring the fourth and fifth in her favor.

The problem? Natalia Silva had already built up too much of a lead early on. And honestly, the fight, as well as its commentary, was one of the few letdowns on a UFC 332 card that was absolutely loaded with knockouts. While other fights were ending with people getting slept, Silva and ‘The Joker’ went the distance in a title fight that never quite lived up to the main-event spotlight.

At times, it felt more like something you’d see buried in the middle of a Fight Night card than the headliner of a numbered UFC event. A big reason the fight played out that way was the completely different approaches from the champion and Cong.

Natalia Silva, the clear No. 1 contender, was happy to work her combinations while moving backward and making ‘The Joker’ chase her. The Chinese contender, meanwhile, kept charging forward and looking for clinches instead of simply keeping Silva at the end of her punches.

Even Dana White thought Wang waited too long to turn things up.

“I think that when Wang goes back and watches the film, she’s going to hate herself,” the UFC CEO said at the UFC 332 post-fight press conference. “If she had stepped on the gas a little earlier, it would have been a completely different fight. It was close.”

Wang Cong’s eye-poke explanation definitely adds another wrinkle to a fight where she struggled to find any real momentum. And there’s a pretty interesting bit of history here, too: she isn’t the first of Natalia Silva’s opponents to have an issue with eye pokes.

Earlier this year, the Brazilian poked former strawweight champion Rose Namajunas in the left eye multiple times during their UFC 324 fight. This time, the damage was seriously nasty. Namajunas suffered a severe canalicular laceration, basically a tear in the eyelid’s tear-drainage system, and had to undergo emergency eye surgery a few days later.

The injury kept Namajunas out for around three months, and she spent her recovery with a silicone tube running through her eye and nose.

Surprisingly, like the latest fight, the referee ruled those eye pokes accidental, so Silva wasn’t docked any points and went on to pick up a close unanimous decision win.

And we’ve all seen just how nasty eye pokes can get in MMA. Just last month Tom Aspinall was forced to vacate his heavyweight title after a severe double eye poke from Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 left him sidelined for nearly a year.

As for Wang Cong, her late push proved she still had enough in the tank to make things interesting. She started finding her rhythm and making the fight competitive, but by then, the damage was already done.

The deficit she built up in the earlier rounds was simply too much to overcome, and Natalia Silva ultimately left with the belt.

Wang Cong can still quickly work her way back to title contention

This one is going to sting for Wang Cong, especially since it was her first shot at UFC gold. She had her moments and made things competitive late, but heading into the championship rounds, she was already behind on the scorecards. At that point, she basically needed a finish to steal the belt.

The upside? The women’s flyweight division is still pretty wide open behind Natalia Silva, so ‘The Joker’ doesn’t need to start all over again. Put together a couple of wins and she could be right back in the title mix.

And Manon Fiorot could be a really interesting next fight. The former No. 1 contender is coming off a unanimous decision loss to Alexa Grasso, and a matchup with the Chinese fighter would give us two dangerous strikers going at it.

For now, Wang Cong has to shake off her first UFC title loss and get back to work. But with plenty of room behind Natalia Silva at 125 pounds, a couple of wins could have her right back in the title conversation.