In over 30 years of history, the UFC has seen some massive changes, and most of them have been positive. However, eye pokes have always been a problem that the promotion hasn’t been able to solve. Time and again, fans and fighters demand something from Dana White and the UFC to stop this problem from happening. And after UFC 321’s disappointing ending with Tom Aspinall unable to continue fighting after getting double eye poked by Ciryl Gane, it has become a hot topic once again. But who is really to blame for these pokes?

Recently, fans have started putting the responsibility on the fighters themselves. Not only that, but people are demanding strict actions like point deductions or even straight-up DQ losses. And there’s some serious support behind that argument from industry experts like Ariel Helwani. So, ahead of the UFC Vegas 111 main event fight, Randy Brown decided to address the situation, making a counterargument for the fighters and subtly calling out Dana White and the UFC for not making good enough gloves. 

Randy Brown blames Dana White for the UFC glove design amid eye-poke controversy

In an interview with MMA fighting, ‘Rude boy’ said, “Here is the thing. It’s easy for people to judge outside, just to say hey, Point deduction immediately. Eye poke. A foul is a foul. It’s easy, just close your fist.’ It depends on the fighter’s style, how they fight right. It depends on your attributes as well, and your makeup. Some people have bigger hands and fingers. You cannot fight, squeezing your fist the entire time. Then you’ll be wound up; you cannot parry punches. Even when you kick, your hands have to be open. Your posterior chain is loose, so you can get these kicks out.  

Here, Brown emphasized how a fighter’s fighting style can determine whether an eye poke happens or not, and that they shouldn’t be immediately penalized for it. Even former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson brought up this point while breaking down Ciryl Gane’s Muay Thai background and open-palm fighting style as the cause of the UFC 321 fallout against Tom Aspinall. Digging deeper into that argument, Brown also mentioned that in a fight, 95% of eye pokes are unintentional, so an immediate point deduction or DQ doesn’t make sense, while calling out glove design as the main issue.

He added on the MMA fighting interview, “And a lot of people really don’t understand those things, right? So, they think that if someone gets eye poked, ‘Oh he’s a dirty fighter,’ these things. I wanna say eye pokes are 95% of the time unintentional. It’s the thing that happens because of the gloves that we wear in the sport that we are in.”  

Well, the UFC tried to make a change with the Golden Gloves last year, but they discontinued them after getting feedback from the fighters. There have also been a lot of voices like veteran journalist Luke Thomas and Demetrious Johnson, pushing for the return of PRIDE FC–style gloves, or even the Trevor Whitman-designed gloves that Joe Rogan endorsed, yet nothing seems to be happening on that front. Which brings us back to the same problem: What is the solution? 

‘Rude Boy’ provides a solution for the eye poke 

Recently, veteran referee Herb Dean told MMA reporter Helen Yee in an interview that the officials and the UFC were going to have a meeting to finally address the eye-poke problem. With a massive UFC 322 event at Madison Square Garden coming up, the promotion is on alert; the nightmare from the previous PPV can’t happen again. But still, nothing concrete has been announced by Dana White or the commission.

This has left many people speculating about what the next step should be. And with that same confusion, Randy Brown suggested that there should at least be one warning before a referee decides to take a point or rule the fight as either a DQ or a no-contest.

‘Rude Boy’ added in his MMA fighting interview, “I think that there shouldn’t be any automatic point deduction. But I do think something needs to be done, whether it is with the gloves or whether it’s some sort of rule, one warning, then after that, so the fighter can be aware that I have to make these adjustments right now. Then it happens again, and then a point deduction. But I truly don’t even have the answers.”  

Now, that’s very much in line with what the UFC already follows with the current rules regarding eye pokes or other unintentional fouls. However, since even one eye poke can cause severe damage, as we saw with Aspinall vs Gane in Abu Dhabi, could this really be a valuable solution if the fighter’s eye condition forces them to stop? What are your thoughts? Comment down below.