{"id":255945,"date":"2025-11-01T18:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T18:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/255945\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T18:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T18:12:07","slug":"ufc-referee-herb-dean-confirms-meeting-next-week-to-discuss-eye-pokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/255945\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC referee Herb Dean confirms meeting next week to discuss eye pokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fallout of UFC 321\u2019s main event<\/a> has sparked serious conversation about eye pokes in mixed martial arts, which in turn has led to a meeting next week to discuss the matter in detail.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, UFC 321\u2019s heavyweight title fight between Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane ended in disaster last weekend. That\u2019s because Gane landed two simultaneous eye pokes<\/a> in the first round that rendered Aspinall unable to continue. The unfortunate end to UFC 321\u2019s anticipated pay-per-view (PPV) card has left everyone pointing fingers and wondering what can be done in the future to avoid such an incident.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there doesn\u2019t seem to be a perfect solution to the ongoing eye poke issue we\u2019re seeing in MMA. UFC tried switching to different gloves and that only resulted in less knockouts for fans. Fighters are doing their best to keep their fists closed, but when the action gets going it\u2019s tough not to react with fingers out. It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess how things will be fixed.<\/p>\n

Luckily, a discussion about possible fixes is almost underway.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to long-time MMA referee, Herb Dean, who told MMA reporter, Helen Yee<\/a>, earlier this week that a meeting about eye pokes will be held on Nov. 4. Check it out below:<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough people are fed up with the eye poke situation that something is going to be done,\u201d said Dean. \u201cThere\u2019s gonna be a meeting where we go over that. Definitely something\u2019s gonna happen. Enough people are upset, enough of the right people. Some people have been talking, it\u2019s got enough momentum… Early next week, I think there\u2019s a conversation happening on the fourth [of November].\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean, who has been around the sport for a very long time, has seen almost all there is to see as a UFC official. He has some inside scoops that many of us wouldn\u2019t even think about. For example, Dean claims that some fighters admit to intentionally committing fouls after they\u2019ve stepped away from fighting. That definitely doesn\u2019t bode well for these pesky eye pokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some good people, and they\u2019re not doing fouls on purpose,\u201d explained Dean. \u201cThen there are a lot of guys that say, \u2018Well, every groin kick that I ever did was intentional.\u2019 And these are guys, once they\u2019ve retired, they\u2019re telling me, \u2018Oh yeah, that fight when you refereed me, that was intentional when that happened.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fallout of UFC 321\u2019s main event has sparked serious conversation about eye pokes in mixed martial arts,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-255945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}