Extending fingers toward the eyes of an opponent is a foul and could result in the deduction of one point.
Unfortunately, referees have not been enforcing the rule, which is understandable when you consider how often the foul occurs. But ever since Ciryl Gane treated Tom Aspinall the way Moe treated Curly on Calling All Curs, the problem has become too big to ignore.
Veteran referee Herb Dean insists plans are in motion to address the longstanding issue.
“So far, what we’re talking about is, we’ve made
rules,” Dean told Michael Bisping on Believe You Me (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “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.”
Athletes, meanwhile, can do most of the heavy lifting according to this fed-up fighter.
“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 referee charged with officiating the Aspinall-Gane fight, Jason Herzog, is no stranger to eye poke controversy.
“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.”
Dean also named UFC bad boy Sean Strickland as his “favorite” fighter because of “Tarzan’s” closed fists.
“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 or where any of these new “guidelines” get implemented remains to be seen.
