Change is coming in response to the recent eye-poke controversies in the UFC.
Two high-profile heavyweight bouts have been significantly affected by eye pokes in recent weeks. Tom Aspinall’s long-awaited heavyweight title defense against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 ended anticlimactically when Gane inadvertently poked the Englishman, leading to the bout being declared a ‘no contest.’
One week later, Aspinall’s teammate Ante Delija appeared to have stopped Waldo Cortes-Acosta at UFC Vegas 110, only for referee Mark Smith to rule that an eye poke had occurred. The bout was restarted, and Cortes-Acosta went on to knock out Delija.
Now, leading referee Herb Dean has revealed that discussions have taken place over the past week with a view to changing how officials handle such situations moving forward, with point deductions likely to occur when fighters repeatedly extend their fingers.
“One quick rule that can be changed that's going to affect that because we have the sport with the gloves open, we have punching and grappling, so fingers have to be able to be out,” Dean told Michael Bisping and Paul Felder during an appearance on their Believe You Me podcast. “But I think what we're going to do so far, what we're talking about is (that) we've made rules. So we made a rule where it's a foul to extend the fingers towards the eyes, right? So that's the rule we've already had in place, right? So that rule has been there, but we haven't been enforcing it.
“So we're going to move forward on that. I think people would not have been used to seeing someone get a point taken because most of the time when we take a point, it's more as a reactive to the damage and the unbalancing of the fight that's been done by a foul, and that's the only way we can think of balancing it. But this right here is a dangerous foul (extends fingers). Somebody's going to keep doing a dangerous action. We should start taking points by them doing that.”
