UFC referees to clamp down on eye pokes – Dean

Veteran MMA referee Herb Dean says officials will look to more regularly enforce point deductions for eye pokes after recent controversies and meetings around the issue.

Tom Aspinall’s UFC heavyweight title fight was brought to a premature end last month when Ciryl Gane poked the Briton in the eyes.

Referee Jason Herzog elected to call the fight a no-contest, rather than disqualify Gane for the foul.

Dean, who has officiated more than 1,000 bouts, says referees are “talking” about using rules already available to them to stop eye pokes.

“We’ve made rules,” Dean told Michael Bisping’s Believe You Me podcast.

“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.”

Aspinall kept his title despite the no-contest, but was booed by the crowd in Abu Dhabi despite his assertion he could not see – and replays showing he was poked in both eyes.

The Briton is still waiting to find out the extent of the eye injury and was unable to see in the week after the fight.

The controversy ignited a debate as to why Gane was not disqualified.

Referees and athletic commissions in the United States meet regularly to discuss rules and officiating in MMA.

It is at the referee’s discretion whether they deem an eye poke is intentional or not, which affects the resulting punishment.

Dean says deducting a point from an opponent, regardless of intention, has not been regular practise from referees in the UFC or wider MMA world, but they are permitted to do it.

“This right here is a dangerous foul and somebody’s going to keep doing a dangerous action,” Dean said.

“We should start taking points by them doing that action before it actually happens to hurt somebody.

“The other thing about MMA is, I mean, we have a one-point sport,” Dean added.

“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.