Issue 094

November 2012

August’s UFC on Fox 4 event proved to be one of the most entertaining fight cards of the year, and fans were treated to an impressive mix of brutal knockouts, slick submissions and back-and-forth battles. But, as thoroughly pleasing as the night was, I couldn’t help but leave Los Angeles’ Staples Center feeling that the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts suffer from at least one incredibly silly mistake.

On the evening’s preliminary card, light heavyweight contender Phil Davis accidentally drove his fingers into the eyes of Brazilian newcomer Wagner Prado. Referee Luis Cobian noted the infraction and correctly called timeout to inspect the eye and assess the fighter’s condition with the assistance of a cageside physician.

Prado’s English is limited, at best, and it’s unfortunate he was not allowed the use of a translator in speaking to the officials. However, he clearly told Cobian that he was seeing double, leaving the referee and doctor little choice but to wave off the fight, resulting in a no contest. Prado, who was making his UFC debut, was understandably infuriated, but Cobian made the right decision according to the Unified Rules, which only guarantee a five-minute recovery period for fighters who have been hit with illegal shots to the groin.

In Prado’s case, it may not have mattered. Blood pooled in the corner of his eye very quickly, and he admitted he was still struggling to see clearly even a few days after the fight. But give the man some time to clear out his eye and at least try to continue. As anyone who has been poked in the eye can testify, it’s immediately alarming and can blur your vision for several minutes, but with a bit of time to relax and a few moments to allow the tears to settle over your eye, vision can generally be restored very quickly. So why not apply the five-minute rule to victims of this foul?

If the question goes to the timing of fights, we’ve already seen through years of experience, that fighters rarely take a full five-minute break, even for the most serious of groin shots. I can’t imagine eye pokes would somehow encourage a different attitude from the sport’s elite. But at least give them a chance to fight on after such an infraction.

In the meantime, there are little tricks both referees and doctors can implement to help assist in the recovery time. Referees taking the opponent to a neutral corner and offering them a stern warning about their conduct and a very thorough explanation of what they did wrong and why it can never happen again can offer a blinded fighter a few moments to try and clear their vision. Ditto for doctors coming into the cage to address the situation. Doctors are afforded five minutes to make their evaluations and can use that time however they see fit.

Granted, those suggestions are only band-aids for a problem that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible, but it’s something. Sure, it’s not an alarming issue we see week in and week out, but the bottom line is it’s a bad rule that could be quickly fixed. It’s time to lean on your local commissions and work on getting that policy changed.

When fans speak, Dana White listens

Speaking of fans making changes, I have to admit I like the strategy UFC president Dana White employed in promoting the UFC on Fox 4 event. When White announced the winner of the evening’s main event between Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua and Brandon Vera would earn a future light heavyweight title shot, fans took to Twitter to voice their displeasure, and White listened. The UFC boss then elected to add the co-main event between Lyoto Machida and Ryan Bader to the title mix, and ‘The Dragon’ took advantage of the offer by scoring an impressive knockout win and earning a shot at recapturing the belt he once held.

Now, it could be said White didn’t necessarily listen to exactly what the fans were saying. There were plenty of calls for Alexander Gustafsson to earn the nod, and some fans even suggested Glover Teixeira should have been considered. Both of those fighters are still climbing their way up the ranks, and White ultimately elected to leave them out of the discussion. But at the end of the day, UFC brass did make a change based entirely on public opinion.

UFC executives are quite simply never going to be able to please everybody. Pay-per-view prices, frequency of events, visiting particular markets and the quality of fight cards are constant complaints from the MMA community. Many of those items are basic operational policies for the UFC that aren’t likely to change anytime soon. But it was refreshing to see that in this instance, at least, the UFC listened to what fans said they wanted to see. Whether or not that played a role in why the UFC on Fox 4 card was a rousing success is anybody’s guess, but at least from my perspective, it was a good choice.

By John Morgan, former Fighters Only World MMA Awards ‘Journalist of the Year’.