Cat Zingano’s loss to Megan Anderson at December 29’s UFC 232 will stand.
The former UFC women’s bantamweight title challenger was defeated via bizarre TKO by Anderson at the year-ending pay-per-view from Anaheim, Calif. The former Invicta FC champ threw a kick where her big toe grazed Zingano’s eye. She was unable to defend herself as a result and the win went to Anderson.
Yesterday (Tues., February 19, 2019) Zingano appeared in front of the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) to appeal the loss. She and her team argued a toe to the eye should be an illegal move similar to the way an eye poke with a finger obviously is. Zingano believes the fight should have been declared a no contest. Fights significantly affected by eye pokes with fingers often end in that fashion.
However, the commission didn’t see it that way.
According to MMA Fighting, CSAC Executive Director Andy Foster told them Zingano’s loss will stay. They voted 6-1 to uphold the original result. The commissioners ultimately though a poke to the eye from a finger or fingers was truly illegal according to MMA’s Unified Rules. The presiding commissioners asked Foster to look at the rule with the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports (ABC) rules and regulations committee in the future.
Zingano initially thought her eye was ruptured and seriously injured. However, she most likely won’t experience any long-term issues with it. She has called for a rematch with Anderson in the weeks since the bout. Anderson is willing to grant her one.
Update
In a recent media scrum at last week’s UFC Phoenix, Zingano described the scene immediately following the loss. She added that she has an appointment to get it checked again on March 1:
“I thought I lost my eye,” Zingano said. “I thought if I opened my eye, it was going to spill out onto my face, I didn’t want to open it in the cage. When they came up and they checked it, they told me to open it. I said, ‘You’re not the one that I’m gonna open this for.’ Like, ‘I need somebody that knows what’s up to be looking at me.’ I thought I lost it.”
Zingano then said she’d rather ‘have a baby 10 times’ than go through that kind of pain again. She opened up on how the injury has affected her:
“My eye gets tired by the end of the day,” Zingano said. “It’s kind of like being underwater just on one side of my head. My depth perception is off a bit, my dexterity is off a bit. Again, it’s been improving. It’s definitely not what it was a month ago. … My balance is off a bit. Probably the depth perception is the biggest struggle and then having just these weird kind of flashes, these weird lights going off.”
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