Everyone watching UFC these days knows fighters get a few free fouls per bout as a treat. Veteran MMA referee Herb Dean understands everyone is sick of that and is promising change, but we’re not anticipating too much given some of his thoughts on what constitutes an intentional foul.
Dean made an appearance on Dominick Cruz’s new Love & War podcast and said the issue of unpunished eye pokes and low blows will be discussed at the Association of Boxing Commissions’ annual conference this summer. There’s
a whole lot to be discussed, because at this point you have fighters like Derrick Lewis and Jon Jones bragging about fouling as part of their game plan.
“You heard Jon Jones come out and say, ‘I do it on purpose,'” Cruz noted. “He literally did an interview where he said, ‘Yeah, I do it on purpose.'”
Cruz and Dean got into the two Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier fights and Jones’ habit of sticking his hands in opponents’ faces — something that became illegal after a rules change. But it’s only illegal to stick your outstretched fingers in the direction of your opponent’s face. It’s not illegal to put your hand on your opponent’s head. And if your fingers happen to get in their eyes when you do that … well, whose fault is that?
“So I have my hand on your head, controlling your head,” Dean explained. “Perfectly fine. But of course, you don’t like that, you don’t want your head controlled. And you start moving your head around wildly and all of a sudden you get your eye on a finger. You actually put your eye on a finger.”
“Because yeah, you’re doing the right thing, but the way you chose to do it, you didn’t choose to back off,” he continued. “You started rolling your head and somehow a finger got near your eye. So what I’m saying is that’s why we can’t make things automatic. That’s why there has to be discretion.”
Cruz argued that eye pokes were so significant they had to be dealt with harshly, even if a few fighters lose points over ‘unintentional’ eye pokes.
“I think eye pokes, you can [take a point] right away, and it’s gonna minimize the eye pokes,” Cruz said. “At the end of the day, people are using these things. Because it’s a deathmatch. All is fair in love and war. It just is.”
“How much money is on the line for this fight? Twenty million? Ten million? Yeah, I get why Jon Jones poked this fool in the eye just to get a minute [break]. It’s too much money on the line. They hate each other too much. So if you get poked like that, now you take a point. Right? The whole fight changes.”
Dean promised to bring Cruz’s thoughts to the ABC meeting, and it would be great to imagine a scenario where any significant eye poke results in a point deduction so it’s up to the fighter to keep their damn hands closed. But this has been an ongoing problem for years and nothing has changed. So long as referees seem obsessed with giving fouling fighters the benefit of the doubt, there is no incentive for them to stop poking their opponent in the eyes.
