Waldo Cortes-Acosta made sure another UFC event didn’t end in unceremonious fashion due to an eye poke.
Just seven days ago at UFC 321, heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall was unable to continue after being
poked in the eye by Ciryl Gane, resulting in the bout being ruled a no-contest; in Saturday’s UFC Vegas 110 co-main event, it was Cortes-Acosta who was poked in the eye by Aspinall’s teammate Ante Delija, but after some initial confusion (and what looked to be a TKO win for Delija), the bout resumed and Cortes-Acosta came back to score a shocking knockout.
At the evening’s post-fight press conference, Cortes-Acosta was asked why he decided to fight through the foul rather than settle for a no-contest.
“Look, it’s a different breed,” Cortes-Acosta said. “I’m born in Dominican Republic. Everything is war over there. One poke in the eye, everything that happened in my life, this can’t stop me. I’ll never let one poke of the eye lose one opportunity can change my life and my family’s.”
Waldo Cortes-Acosta’s miraculous win was not without controversy.
Initially, it looked as though referee Mark Smith had waved off the bout with Delija flurrying with punches and Cortes-Acosta struggling to defend himself against the fence. However, after a review for the potential eye poke, Smith acknowledged the foul and Cortes-Acosta was given the option to continue. He did and moments later his hand was raised.
“The first one I see is the whole crowd outside and then him thinking he won the fight,” Cortes-Acosta said, recapping the strange sequence. “Jumping, everything, the head coach jumping, [Delija] winning and everything like that, and the referee and the commission saying, ‘I didn’t stop the fight. You have five minutes, like, recover for your eye’ and everything like that and I said, at one point, ‘I can fight like that.’ … What happened with me is I see in that moment and that reminded me, a little bit, the hands still punching me… but him punching me, like, 11, 12 times, continuing on my head, pretending he can knock me out like that, it’s impossible. I have a break in my head right now. When we have a decision to continue fighting, I can’t let anybody stop me like that.”
With all that said, Cortes-Acosta wasn’t exactly unscathed by the illegal maneuver.
“The eye is bad right now,” Cortes-Acosta said. “I know I see, but I don’t see completely … it’s hurt.”
“The doctor back here in the exams that were done afterwards, post-fight medical, said that there was some sort of streak here inside the eye as if his nail actually got into my eye and struck along the eyeline, but inside the eye. So you could see that that had been damaged,” Cortes-Acosta added with assistance from a Spanish translator.
Hurt or not, Cortes-Acosta doesn’t plan to waste time now that he’s back in the win column. He defended his spot in the heavyweight rankings, has now won six of his past seven fights, and already has an idea for who he should fight next to take a step closer to a championship fight.
“In seven days, [the doctor] says I’ll be ready to come back,” Cortes-Acosta said. “I’m ready for the fighting, this December, and UFC put me on the card, any card I can do it. I want to fight with Curtis Blaydes and I want a title shot. I want [Aspinall and Gane] to rematch and [I’ll] be available for the winner and a title shot.”
