Christian Lee sympathizes with the emotional turmoil Ciryl Gane and Tom Aspinall undoubtedly faced after an eye poke ended their fight at UFC 321 because he endured the same exact thing.
Following a two-year
long layoff due to a family tragedy and then spending time coaching his younger brother for his professional fighting debut, Lee finally returned to ONE Championship this past December to defend his lightweight title against Alibeg Rasulov. After admittedly knocking off some ring rust in the early going, Lee finally started to find his rhythm in the second round and that’s when he accidentally fouled Rasulov with an eye poke of his own.
Time passed but Rasulov just couldn’t recover enough to continue and the fight was stopped before being declared a no-contest. Lee was understandably disappointed but couldn’t blame Rasulov because intentional or not, the mistake was his to own for committing the foul.
“It’s hard,” Lee told MMA Fighting. “You can’t really judge a fighter for not wanting to continue after an eye poke because you don’t know the severity of it. Sometimes it looks like just a shallow eye poke but in reality you scratched a retina. It’s a lot worse than it seems. I’m not going to judge my opponent for stopping with an eye poke.”
The same goes for Aspinall after he suffered an eye poke towards the end of the opening round in his fight with Gane, which led to a stoppage and a no-contest for the decision.
Afterwards, Aspinall faced hostile criticism that he somehow should have continued despite repeatedly stating that he had no vision in one eye.
For his part, Lee admits he would probably attempt to push through any injury suffered during a fight — even an eye poke — but that doesn’t mean he would bash another fighter for choosing not to do the same thing.
“Everyone knows how tough Tom Aspinall is so it’s not a matter of toughness,” Lee said. “I think that if you feel like you can’t perform to the best of your abilities after that eye poke, then that’s why guys will choose to have a no-contest. There’s some guys that are just those crazy fighters, they don’t care. They’ll continue to fight even if they have one eye. That’s the way I feel about it.
“I’ll continue to fight with one eye. I’m hoping it doesn’t happen but nothing is going to stop me from finishing the fight. But it just goes down to who you are as a fighter. There’s a lot of different competitors out there. It’s unfortunate a fight ends with an eye poke.”
When it comes to his own situation, Lee holds no ill will towards Rasulov and he’s just hoping for closure in the rematch that happens at ONE 173 from Japan on Saturday.
“It happens,” Lee said. “I don’t hold any judgment against him for that. I’m upset about the result about how the fight ended but not towards my opponent. When it comes down to it, there’s going to be no bad blood. It’s nothing personal going into this rematch. I think it will just be a continuation of our last fight.”
If anything, Lee feels even better going into this rematch and he expects that to show in his performance.
He’s enduring another lengthy layoff heading into this fight but Lee is confident that he’s more than prepared to finish what he started with Rasulov almost 11 months ago.
“I feel much better going into this fight than the first time,” Lee said. “The first fight, I was ready, I was prepared but there was also that setback where my card got pushed back four weeks. So it extended, I had a nine week camp for that one and it got pushed back to a 13 week camp with a four week extension. That just led to a lot of preparation into that last one.
“For this one, everything is going smooth. I feel physically stronger. I feel like I’ve improved as a fighter from last year to this year. I’m excited. I definitely feel prepared.”
