As pointed out by John Morgan on X, the promotion is scheduled to deliver a “New UFC Equipment Announcement and Presentation” on Friday at noon PDT. Fans immediately flocked to the comments, hoping that this meant the Las Vegas-based company would unveil a new glove design to help address the UFC’s eye-poke epidemic.
Amy Kaplan of FanSided MMA also revealed on X that the announcement will be a “UFC Glove Launch” following the official weigh-ins for UFC 300, which goes down this Saturday night, April 13.
“There will be a “New UFC Glove Launch presentation” on Friday after the official weigh-ins,” Kaplan’s post reads. “It’s unclear if this will be special branded gloved for the event or actually a new design of the gloves.”
As Kaplan explains, this could be nothing more than the presentation of a glove featuring a unique logo to celebrate the promotion’s landmark event this weekend.
Two Fights end as the result of eye pokes in the UFC’s return to Atlantic City
Returning to the Octagon at UFC Atlantic City on March 30, former middleweight champion Chris Weidman climbed back into the win column for the first time since 2020. Unfortunately, the victory was mired in controversy after a slow-motion replay revealed that the ‘All American’ had poked his opponent, Bruno Silva, in the eye not once, but twice during the fight-ending sequence. Still, Weidman walked away with the win, first by TKO before being switched to a unanimous decision.
Moments before, Nursulton Ruziboev claimed his 10th-straight win with a TKO over Sedriques Dumas. However, Dumas appeared to get poked in the eye at one point and immediately protested. The referee allowed the fight to continue as he did not see the eye poke occur in real time. Moments later, Riziboev pummeled Dumas against the fence, forcing the stoppage and claiming what would be one of two incredibly controversial wins on the night.
Heavyweight sluggers Travis “Hapa” Browne and Matt Mitrione did battle during the main card of yesterday’s (January 17, 2016) UFC Fight Night 81 from the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. The highly-ranked contender in Browne came away with a third round TKO victory, but it didn’t come without its fair share of controversy. “Hapa” ended
Heavyweight sluggers Travis “Hapa” Browne and Matt Mitrione did battle during the main card of yesterday’s (January 17, 2016) UFC Fight Night 81 from the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
The highly-ranked contender in Browne came away with a third round TKO victory, but it didn’t come without its fair share of controversy.
“Hapa” ended up landing a pair of eye pokes on Mitrione, neither of which were caught by the referee. Speaking with MMAFighting after the bout, Browne claimed that he wasn’t a dirty fighter, also admitting that he repeatedly apologized to “Meathead” inside of the cage:
“In the cage I was apologizing up and down to Matt,” said Browne, who won via third-round TKO. “That’s not my game. I’m not a dirty fighter. Even in the fight, I’m like, ‘Matt, man, I’m really sorry, I’m not trying to do that.’ He’s like ‘I’m jumping in on you, I’m alright, that happens.’ You know what I mean? It’s just one of those things where, it’s an accident, you know what I mean?”
Continuing on, “Hapa” said that the two pokes occurred at times where he was simply defending himself and letting his instincts and reactions takeover rather than a conscious effort to foul his opponent:
“If you watch the fight, it’s not like I’m moving toward him trying to paw at him and poke his eye,” Browne said. “It’s more like, I’m trying to back up and hold my hand out. Third round I finally started closing my fist. It’s just part of the game, I guess. There’s no malicious intent behind it.”
After the pokes, Browne admitted that the referee warned him, but it was obviously a tad bit late:
“That’s why the referee’s in there,” said Browne. “He warned me the last time: ‘Next time I’m taking a point.’ I did what I could do to not let that happen again. It was an accident. I don’t know what else to say.”
Mitirione’s eye would further take damage when Browne landed a huge right hand, breaking “Meathead’s” orbital bone in the process.
Eye pokes have definitely become a glaring problem within mixed martial arts (MMA), but is there really any solution to the issue?
Props to TheMontageKing — who previously created those amazing referee blooper reels — for unleashing another video compilation of the gnarliest MMA fouls in history. Featuring: Jon Jones poking everybody in the eye, Wanderlei Silva giving and receiving nut-shots, Michael Bisping being a dick as usual, Mike Kyle fighting really dirty, Bob Schrijber’s execution-style axe-kick to the back of Daijiro Matsui’s head, and Bobby Green‘s history of violence against groin-protectors. Check out the first “Worst Fouls in MMA” highlight reel right here, and follow us after the jump for some unrelated madness from TheMontageKing…
Props to TheMontageKing — who previously created those amazing referee blooper reels — for unleashing another video compilation of the gnarliest MMA fouls in history. Featuring: Jon Jones poking everybody in the eye, Wanderlei Silva giving and receiving nut-shots, Michael Bisping being a dick as usual, Mike Kyle fighting really dirty, Bob Schrijber’s execution-style axe-kick to the back of Daijiro Matsui’s head, and Bobby Green‘s history of violence against groin-protectors. Check out the first “Worst Fouls in MMA” highlight reel right here, and follow us after the jump for some unrelated madness from TheMontageKing…
Following his Instagram trolling of Phil Davis, UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones is now aiming his brand-new Internet heel persona at you, the crybaby fans who didn’t appreciate his masterful Muay Thai-style eye-pokes at UFC 172. And so, Jones has entered the “eatin’ y’all food, leavin’ dishes” stage of his public life. I support it. Some fans are going to hate this guy no matter what he does, so you might as well steer into the skid, so to speak.
Note: This video was originally uploaded to Jon’s Instagram account, but then he deleted before it resurfaced on YouTube. Check it out while it lasts.
Following his Instagram trolling of Phil Davis, UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones is now aiming his brand-new Internet heel persona at you, the crybaby fans who didn’t appreciate his masterful Muay Thai-style eye-pokes at UFC 172. And so, Jones has entered the “eatin’ y’all food, leavin’ dishes” stage of his public life. I support it. Some fans are going to hate this guy no matter what he does, so you might as well steer into the skid, so to speak.
Note: This video was originally uploaded to Jon’s Instagram account, but then he deleted before it resurfaced on YouTube. Check it out while it lasts.
It’s one of the strangest, most arbitrary double-standards of MMA’s Unified Rules — you get five minutes to recover from a strike to the groin, but if you can’t immediately continue after an eye-poke, the fight is over. Considering that the eyes are the balls of the face, it’s a shame that both sets of organs aren’t given equal protection under the law.
Gian Villante was the latest victim of the eye-poke technicality at UFC 159, when he lost a technical decision to Ovince St. Preux after getting gouged 33 seconds into the second round of their prelim scrap. As he explained afterwards, “I couldn’t see for a second. I just blinked my eye to try to get some fluid back in there. I would have been fine 30 seconds later. I thought I had five minutes. All I needed was 10 seconds. But they ended it…I don’t know what was I supposed to say. And if I did know what to say, I’m in the middle of a fight. I’m not going to think, ‘What is the exact rule on what to say when you get poked in the eye?’ I’m going to say exactly how I feel. I can’t see for this second, but give me a second, and I’ll be all right.”
Instead, referee Kevin Mulhall stopped the fight, and the judges scored the action up to that point, giving Villante a loss in his UFC debut. On the bright side, that disappointing moment might have been the last straw in the UFC’s tolerance for some of the sport’s most controversial rules. According to an MMAJunkie report, UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner will make a formal request to change MMA’s eye-poke protocol at the Association of Boxing Commissions’ annual conference in late July. (The ABC is responsible for maintaining the Unified Rules of MMA, and providing uniform standards for MMA among the state and tribal athletic commissions.)
It’s one of the strangest, most arbitrary double-standards of MMA’s Unified Rules — you get five minutes to recover from a strike to the groin, but if you can’t immediately continue after an eye-poke, the fight is over. Considering that the eyes are the balls of the face, it’s a shame that both sets of organs aren’t given equal protection under the law.
Gian Villante was the latest victim of the eye-poke technicality at UFC 159, when he lost a technical decision to Ovince St. Preux after getting gouged 33 seconds into the second round of their prelim scrap. As he explained afterwards, “I couldn’t see for a second. I just blinked my eye to try to get some fluid back in there. I would have been fine 30 seconds later. I thought I had five minutes. All I needed was 10 seconds. But they ended it…I don’t know what was I supposed to say. And if I did know what to say, I’m in the middle of a fight. I’m not going to think, ‘What is the exact rule on what to say when you get poked in the eye?’ I’m going to say exactly how I feel. I can’t see for this second, but give me a second, and I’ll be all right.”
Instead, referee Kevin Mulhall stopped the fight, and the judges scored the action up to that point, giving Villante a loss in his UFC debut. On the bright side, that disappointing moment might have been the last straw in the UFC’s tolerance for some of the sport’s most controversial rules. According to an MMAJunkie report, UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner will make a formal request to change MMA’s eye-poke protocol at the Association of Boxing Commissions’ annual conference in late July. (The ABC is responsible for maintaining the Unified Rules of MMA, and providing uniform standards for MMA among the state and tribal athletic commissions.)
As Ratner puts it: “What we want the referees to do is don’t make a medical decision. Call time. Don’t ask the kid if he can see or not. Bring the doctor in and let the doctor make the determination…Now obviously, if any fighter can’t see, you want the fight stopped. But here’s a case where if you go through the mechanic and bring the doctor in, it will give them a chance to see if in fact the eye clears up and he can fight…I think by bringing the doctor in, just the whole operation will take a couple of minutes, and I think that should alleviate most of the pain and give us enough time to make sure the guy can fight.”
Alright, so it’s not as simple as “five minutes for eye-pokes too,” but the reasoning makes sense; give a fighter a chance to blink a few times before asking him if he can see, and let a doctor make the final decision about whether a match can continue.
Ratner also plans to propose a change to the definition of a “grounded opponent.” In the current incarnation of the Unified Rules, having a hand down on the mat gives a fighter “grounded” status, meaning that their opponent isn’t allowed to kick or knee them in the head. But fighters like Quinton Jackson and Paul Buentello have blatantly exploited this rule in the past, intentionally putting their hands on the mat to avoid trouble — and Ratner isn’t a fan of that either:
“We really believe this ‘three-point stance rule,’ where a fighter is just placing his hand on and off the mat so he won’t get hit, needs to be addressed. That’s not what the rule is for. That has to be looked at…If you’re going against the intent of the rule, and that’s what’s being done with some fighters, then we’ve got to change it.”
We wish Mr. Ratner luck in his quest to add a little bit of common sense to the Unified Rules. And once he has success with fixing the eye-poke and grounded-fighter rules, we hope he can help revise MMA’s other bad rules, like lifting the ban on 12-to-6 elbows, and prohibiting non-English-speaking fighters from taking us through the replay.
Are there any other MMA rules that you’d like to see changed?
