Longtime referee Herb Dean says there will be stricter guidelines when it comes to eye pokes in MMA.
Dean recently appeared on Believe You Me and was asked about recent rules meetings in the wake of the fallout
of UFC 321, where Tom Aspinall vs. Ciryl Gane ended in a no-contest after Gane delivered a fight-ending eye poke.
“So far, what we’re talking about is, we’ve made rules,” Dean said. “So we made a rule it’s a foul to extend the fingers towards the eyes. That’s the rule we’ve already had in place. 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 of a reactive to the damaging and the unbalancing of the fight that’s been done by a foul, and that’s the only way we can think to balance it. But this right here is a dangerous foul and somebody’s going to keep doing a dangerous action. We should start taking points by them doing that action before it actually happens to hurt somebody.
“The other thing about MMA is, I mean, we have a one-point sport,” Dean continued. “The majority of three-round fights, what’s the score? 29-28. So you take one point, you’ve taken a majority of wins and turned it into a draw. But we’re going to have to do something, so that’s one of the things we’ve thought about that we’re going to be doing. That’s something that’s going to happen.”
Eye pokes, and referees refusing to enforce rules and penalties has been a huge problem in the sport. Every event there seems to be a questionable issue, and Dean hopes that he and his colleagues are going to take an important step forward in changing that.
When it comes to the fingers and eye pokes, Dean says fighters should look towards the former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland in how to compete without fouling.
“The other thing is writing some more guidelines for exactly what is the foul,” Dean explained. “That last foul, the one with Aspinall, I think the fingers were up, right? So we can agree the fingers were up… so we might have to change that, and also, because there’s a lot of times even when you’re pawing… when you get to the end of your reach, automatic, your fingers start to come down as you’re reaching out. …
“When Sean Strickland fights, I know he has a bad boy image, I’m not trying to make him a teacher’s pet. But, man, he’s my favorite when I see him come out [with his fingers closed], and he’s parrying [all around]. I don’t have to worry about the fingers.”
