Mailbag: Regarding the UFC Eye works, we have tried nothing and we are all short of ideas

What, if necessary, should be done on the scourge of eyes in the MMA? Is Ilia Topuria on the verge of the largest race for three fights in the history of MMA, and will the UFC be held on the way? And of all the canceled fights, which one hurts the most?

All this and more in this week’s postal bag. To ask your own question, hit @benfowlkesmma Or @ benfowlkes.bsky.social.

Funny fact: the gouge of the eyes was one of the very few things not authorized at the first UFC. However, this continues to be a problem today. Isn’t that something?

What is wild for me is that it has been a problem known for years now – even decades – and we have really tried almost nothing as a way to resolve it. Seriously, Randy Couture was there by Chuck Liddell in the mid-2000s and nothing has changed since then to make this less likely today.

It seems clear to me that the problem is the gloves. Take the main event of the UFC on Saturday between Song Yadong and Henry Cejudo, for example. The song was not trying to prick Cejudo in the eyes. He was clearly trying to intercept the right hand of Cejudo, who had already stuck him several times in the fight. But this time, the right hand was a feint of Cejudo, then Song stretched out for something that was not there, just as Cejudo advanced in those stretched, reaching the fingers. The result? Cejudo obtained three respect in both eyes and the fight ended up being stopped.

We can say that the song should have lost a point (I think all the faults – Pakes for the eyes, the groin strokes, the closing catches – should be confirmed by rereading followed by a deduction of automatic points), but this fight ends as a majority draw. I doubt that we feel more satisfied with this result.

What is crazy is that the conceptions of gloves that could limit the eye pokes are there. They have been there for years. And when the UFC has announced that it had made tons of research and spent a lot of money to design new gloves, many of us thought about it that limiting the ocular pokes would be the priority. It turns out that the glove designers told us, it was not even really a thought. Then, the UFC abandoned these new gloves a few months later anyway. Now we are back to do nothing, except complaining about the eyes of the eyes afterwards.

Like someone who had just Bank A really interesting interview with Dan Hooker about 12 hours before announcing that he was out of the fight of Justin Gaethje at the UFC 313, which I seem quite in mind.

As for those you mentioned, Khabib Nurmagomedov against Tony Ferguson felt like the one who fled. At least it was like that for a while. But after witnessing the sharp drop in Ferguson, I’m not sure it would have been so competitive in practice.

Looking outside the UFC, I’m still angry that we did not have Fedor Emelianenko against Josh Barnett in the affliction. Of course, we know why. Barnett was reported by a drug screening test and the affliction canceled the whole event just before throwing in the towel on what had essentially been a silver pit of a combat promotion to start.

And although it has never been reserved, I can’t quite forgive StrikeForce for having missed a chance to make Emelianenko against Alistair Overeem. Scott Coker and his crew tried to set it up for later in the Grand Prix of heavy goods vehicles, forgetting that the gods of the MMA take great pleasure in destroying the best put plans.

Can I say something without people getting angry? These are the women of the ring / octagon. They add nothing. They TO DO Nothing. It is a holdver in an era of boxing when the crowd was all men and the combat cards did not include women who were in fact athletes. It is an old tired tradition and we would not lose anything at all if it finally disappeared.

And look, I’m a red blood hetero. I like to look at the pretty ladies. But we live in a society where the lack of opportunities to look at pretty ladies is really not a problem. Each person who looks at these UFC events, in their pockets, a miniature computer which can evoke an infinite number of images of pretty lady in a few seconds. So why do we need false smiles and kisses blown with cages? We don’t do it, that’s the answer. There, I said it.

If not, what is it? Who else has not only beaten but absolutely demolished the two large precedents of his division (in a calendar year), then increased a division to beat a dominant champion and a book for the book n ° 1 in a higher weight category to finish the trilogy?

The fact that the CEO of the UFC, Dana White, even talks about doing something else that hea Topuria against Islam Makhachev is absurd. This is the biggest fight you could make for one or the other. This is one of the biggest battles you can make, end, in any weight class. To suggest even that you could give up, it should be enough to revoke your promoter’s license.

Topuria does exactly what we always say that we want the fighters to do. He finished two big ones and now wants to challenge himself against a champion in a higher weight category. He even canceled his title to do so, so as not to hold the featherweight division. This confidence and this ambition, the desire to take an enormous risk to drive out – is rare. How could you at least give him the chance?

It does not seem that the UFC knows what to do with it. He is an old big one in a difficult division, but he is always good enough so that he can spoil the hopes of the competitor of someone else. The fighting game likes to nourish the old to young people, but it is delicate when the old people remain competitive enough to be a problem. Currently, it seems that the UFC strategy on Aldo is to treat it as if it were only another interchangeable level of interchangeable level, which is a disappointment. It deserves better. And fans deserve to see him in more interesting matches.