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The eye poke that ended the UFC 321 heavyweight title bout between champion Tom Aspinall and former interim titleholder Ciryl Gane may have been the catalyst for change.
The Oct. 25th pay-per-view main event came to an abrupt halt late in the opening round after Gane inadvertently poke Aspinall in both eyes rendering him unable to see and unable to continue. Eye pokes have long been a problem in mixed marital arts, but according to veteran referee Herb Dean a rule change will be coming soon.
“I think enough people are fed up with the eye poke situation that something is going to be done,” Dean told Helen Yee Sports. “The thing with changing rules, there’s always unintended consequences, but we have to try something and I think that people are ready to move on and try something with that.
“People have been talking already and there’s going to be a meeting where we kind of go over that a little bit. But, yeah, there’s definitely something going to happen.”
“Enough people are upset,” continued Dean. “And probably enough of the right people. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to any of them, but I think some people have been talking, so it’s got enough momentum.”
Dean would like to see several rule changes and believes some of them will be addressed in the upcoming meeting.
“There’s a bunch of rules that I think should be changed, and I think we’re going to get to some of those too this time,” he said. “I think one of the silliest rules we have that makes a lot of things happen is we have this intentional and unintentional, and how are we – so the referee is supposed to be a mind reader.”
Related: Former UFC champion proposes solution to eye pokes
“I think we need to change that because it’s very, there’s a lot things that happen. There’s ways you have to go. If you rule it intentional, then you have to do certain things. And if it’s unintentional, you have to do other things, so that’s one of the most annoying things. And that’s been a rule for a long time and fighters know it and there’s ways they can game the system. … I think we’re hopefully going to look at that this time too.”
The meeting to address potential rule changes takes place next week and Dean expects commissions to work fast to implement any changes made.
“I think they want to move fast on this one. I don’t think they’re going to wait until the ABC meeting that usually happens in the summertime. I think they’re going to try to get everybody to meet somewhere else, meet some way, you know, on phone calls, or like on a Zoom meeting or something like that,” he said.
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