Saturday night at UFC 161 did not end the way Pat Barry had hoped, with the heavyweight fighter falling to his friend Shawn Jordan by TKO in the first round.
The loss moved Barry’s record to 2-2 over his last four fights, but the loss is now attached to a little bit of controversy after some replays of the video surfaced.
The initial camera view of Jordan’s uppercuts that rattled Barry and precipitated the end of the fight were not shown live due to the angle, but upon replay there is some evidence that a thumb may have inadvertently gone into Barry’s eye, which quickly stunned him before Jordan unleashed more punches.
Before Barry could even signal to the referee that he endured an eye poke, Jordan was swarming on him and the fight was stopped seconds later.
On Monday, Barry’s manager, Brian Butler of SuckerPunch Entertainment, sent shots of the fight and the apparent eye poke to Bleacher Report, along with photos of the fighter’s damaged eye a day after the fight occurred.
Butler made it clear that he is taking it upon himself to bring this to light, and Barry is never a fighter that wants to appear as if he’s making excuses for a loss.
“The eye poke is what stopped Pat. He was not dazed or even close to being unconscious,” Butler told Bleacher Report on Monday. “Watch the way he just turtles up to cover his eye. If it was more blatant, the ref would have given Pat time to recover, but it was hard to see.
“You can see Pat actually almost tap to motion the ref it was his eye, but Shawn was hitting so fast he couldn’t remove his glove from his eye.”
Barry posted a video on Sunday following the fight showing off his damaged eye, but didn’t make any mention of an eye poke that led to the end of the bout.
Jordan’s punches came in repeatedly, with two quick uppercuts before Barry backed off towards the cage. Jordan then unleashed a barrage of punches as Barry fell to the ground, covering up before the referee swooped in for the stoppage.
On paper, Barry’s loss reads as a TKO, which would mark his third knockout defeat in the UFC in his past six fights, but his manager wants to make it clear that he wasn’t knocked out or even seriously hurt during that barrage of strikes.
Butler says it was an accidental eye poke, but the action moved so fast from that moment there was no way the referee would have a chance to see it and react.
“This was set to be a great fight, and what most people didn’t see was that this stoppage was due to an eye gouge Pat received from an uppercut,” Butler stated. “The strikes themselves did not cause Pat to go down. He took a thumb directly into his eyeball and turtles up to protect it. Unfortunately, the ref did not have the angle I saw it (at), and the fight was stopped.”
Butler stated it’s not been decided at this time if he will try to file any kind of appeal with the athletic commission in Winnipeg for the inadvertent eye poke. Because the appeals process has to be very thorough, with evidence to potentially overturn any decision, it’s unknown if any appeal would have much of a chance of winning at this point.
Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report and all quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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