Dominick Cruz had T.J. Dillashaw on his YouTube show recently to chum it up and talk about lots of stuff going on in the UFC right now. If you’re an old head, like me, you know this is notable since Cruz and Dillashaw had a pretty bitter rivalry back in the day. Cruz, Dillashaw and the cast of Team Alpha Male were in an interesting hate triangle in the 2010s that produced a number of good fights and some truly excellent smack talk (mostly from Cruz).
But it’s all water under the bridge now, it seems.
On the show the two former rivals, who had a bantamweight title fight in 2016 (that Cruz narrowly won), discussed life lessons, coaching kids, Dillashaw’s shoulder injuries and Cody Garbrandt (Cruz said he wants to get him on his show, too).
One of the more interesting topics that came up involved UFC heavyweight champion Ciryl Gane. The pair discussed whether they thought Gane was a cheater, since — you know — he’s done a bunch of fouls and possibly ruined the career of Tom Aspinall because of it.
The two ex champions didn’t think it’s fair to blame Gane for what his fingers are doing to people’s eyes, though. No, it’s actually the fault of the owners of the eyes for being in range of the fingers. Fascinating take, right?
See them discuss that below.
“This is my take on Ciryl Gane poking eyes,” Cruz started. “I haven’t had a lot of eye pokes in my career. I haven’t had a lot of groin shots in my career. I always said if you can poke me in my f*cking eyes, I’m doing something wrong. You can punch me in my head. Trying to hit my head is so f*cking hard. If you could poke me in the eye, that’s my problem.”
So Aspinall is just a bad fighter? That’s why he got poked in the eye? OK…
Dillashaw nodded in agreement with Cruz’s take and then said he didn’t think Gane should be called a cheater.
“It’s gotten blown out of the water since the [Alex] Pereira fight,” Dillashaw said, referencing the UFC White House card fight where Gane clipped Pereira with a few shots to the back of the head. “Obviously everyone is a Pereira fan. They want him to win, and they want to call the illegal blows. It’s like, he wasn’t going for it on purpose, and Pereira’s moving his head as he’s hitting him. I think Herb Dean is unfortunately catching a lot of flack, as well. It’s so crazy to go to a fight and everyone boo Herb Dean. I feel bad for the guy. I don’t think [Gane’s] a purposeful cheater at all.”
Just going to leave this here.
Fighting is chaotic and lax refereeing allows fouls to happen more frequently than they should. No one but Gane knows if his long list of fouls are intentional or not. I personally think he’s just a little careless and that’s been enabled by the way the sport is officiated. And I think it’s horrible that the demur nature of MMA refereeing, which often permits multiple fouls before a serious penalty is incurred, has resulted in Aspinall sustaining an injury that has affected both his career and his quality of life.
Even if I don’t think Gane is an “intentional cheater”, I couldn’t disagree more with Cruz’s ‘blame the victim’ take here.
What do you think? Whose fault is it for an eye poke? The poker or the poke-ee?