Mike Jackson responds to Dean Barry accusing him of taking ‘easy way out’ after eye gouge.
Mike Jackson had moved on. That is until he saw what Dean Barry said in a video he posted to social media in the aftermath of Jackson’s disqualification win over Barry during Saturday’s UFC Vegas 52 curtain jerker.
Jackson said Barry apologized to him for the eye gouge that ended their bout in the first stanza. That reported contrition did not make its way to the video. In fact, Barry put the onus of the fight ending squarely on Jackson.
“To be honest with you, I thought he took the easy way out there,” said Barry. “Didn’t want to stay, didn’t want to continue fighting. Even when I kicked him low, he was talking on the ground…
“Like, if you get hit in the nuts, you can’t be talking like that. The same with the eye poke. Straight after the ref called the fight off, he was fine. Both eyes opened perfectly. He said he can’t open his eyes…”
Barry’s comments lit a fire under Jackson, who moved to 1-1 (1 no contest) with the UFC after his hand was raised on Saturday.
“I was already done,” Jackson said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “He could have just left it at that. In the ring, he’s ‘I’m sorry, my bad, not my intention.’ He could have left it at that. You didn’t have to go online and say ‘Mike quit.’ That’s what I’m saying.
“You’re trying to win at this point. You’re trying to look good. You’re trying to impress people. Whatever your strategy is. But it’s not a smart strategy. That’s why he had to delete his Twitter, for being a dumbass. That all falls on him. He literally did all this to himself and he tries to blame me for quitting.”
Earlier in the fight, Barry landed what Jackson referred to during his on camera recovery time as a “spinning kick to the d-ck.” Jackson said that low blow, which was the second of the brief contest, left him compromised.
The replay of the fight left Jackson thinking that Barry’s eye gouge was no accident.
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— UFC Arabia (@UFCarabia) April 23, 2022
“I’m going to get into why I feel that it was intentional and why Dean Barry is a dirty cheating motherf—ker — initially as it happened, I saw his two fingers, I was literally looking at two fingers in my eye and I’m like ‘oh s—t his hand is in my eye,’” Jackson explained. “Then I feel the pain but from my view, I just saw two fingers. They looked straight, they didn’t look curled or anything like that but again, I felt the pain so that’s why I felt that he poked me.
“Then I watched the replay later and I see the eye gouge, which is really wild. If I’m being honest, I wish I would have seen the replay of everything before I started doing post-fight interviews because I would have had a different sentiment. He curved his fingers, turned and gouged. Those actions tell me it was intentional and I have a theory on how we got here. The point, I watched the replay and I’m like that motherf—ker gouged my eye. He tried to hit me with the Pai Mei eye gouge.”
Jackson said that if the UFC wants to run things back between himself and Barry, he would be more than happy to do so.
“In the unlikeliness that they said ‘let’s run it back,’ I can’t see them doing that, but in the unlikeliness that they say run it back, 100 percent I’m running it back,” Jackson said. “I still stand by my actions and my words going into the fight. He’s not a better fighter than me.”