Charles Jourdain’s undefeated run at bantamweight was put to an end on Saturday night at UFC 331 with Marlon “Chito” Vera earning a third round TKO win over the Quebecois fighter.
Jourdain started off strong, but “Chito” kept turning up the heat as the fight progressed. By the third round he’d knocked “Air” down multiple times, and in the final moments of the fight Jourdain fell on his back and waved the fight off (highlights here).
It was an unusual way for a fight to end and many wondered what had
happened to Jourdain to make him call his own fight like that. Shortly after the event, Charles shared the scary reason why.
“Lost my eyesight in the third,” he wrote on an Instagram Story. “I waved the fight cause I don’t need to receive more strikes to the head. I lost. I failed.”
That’s certainly cause for concern, although Jourdain wasn’t one of the two fighters from UFC 331 that were listed as transported to the hospital following the event.
Jourdain has had eye issues in the past and had a June 2025 fight with Ricky Simon cancelled after an eye issue showed up during pre-fight medicals.
“I didn’t even know my eyes were wrong,” Jourdain recalled during a UFC 331 press event. “I was just doing my classic eye exam before the fight … and the guy’s like, ‘No, your eye is f–ked up. You cannot fight with that eye. You might lose it.’ What are you talking about, I see properly, I don’t see anything. He’s like ‘No, I cannot let you fight.'”
“So we did the surgery a could of weeks after … and I don’t see better or worse, it’s just I had something in my retina, they put a laser in your eye, highly uncomfortable situation, and I thought I would see better. Nothing changed.”
Hopefully the sudden blindness in the eye during the fight isn’t part of the same problem, or Jourdain could be facing similar issues to what former heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall is going through.
Jourdain is 9-8 in the UFC but was on an impressive three fight win streak since dropping to bantamweight in November 2024. Two of those three fights ended with submissions, and all three earned him performance bonuses. As one of the few exciting Canadian fighters climbing the ranks, it would be terrible to see his rise stop after this loss.
