{"id":946097,"date":"2026-10-30T07:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946097\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T07:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T07:18:09","slug":"cruz-and-dillashaw-dont-blame-ciryl-gane-for-people-getting-poked-in-the-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946097\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz and Dillashaw: Don\u2019t blame Ciryl Gane for people getting poked in the eyes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019re 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<\/a> (mostly from Cruz).<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all water under the bridge now, it seems.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s shoulder injuries and Cody Garbrandt (Cruz said he wants to get him on his show, too).<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 you know \u2014 he\u2019s done a bunch of fouls and possibly ruined the career<\/a> of Tom Aspinall because of it.<\/p>\n

The two ex champions didn\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to blame Gane for what his fingers are doing to people\u2019s eyes, though. No, it\u2019s actually the fault of the owners of the eyes for being in range of the fingers. Fascinating take, right?<\/p>\n

See them discuss that below.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my take on Ciryl Gane poking eyes,\u201d Cruz started. \u201cI haven\u2019t had a lot of eye pokes in my career. I haven\u2019t had a lot of groin shots in my career. I always said if you can poke me in my f*cking eyes, I\u2019m 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\u2019s my problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Aspinall is just a bad fighter? That\u2019s why he got poked in the eye? OK\u2026<\/p>\n

Dillashaw nodded in agreement with Cruz\u2019s take and then said he didn\u2019t think Gane should be called a cheater.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gotten blown out of the water since the [Alex] Pereira fight,\u201d Dillashaw said, referencing the UFC White House card fight where Gane clipped Pereira with a few shots to the back of the head. \u201cObviously everyone is a Pereira fan. They want him to win, and they want to call the illegal blows. It\u2019s like, he wasn\u2019t going for it on purpose, and Pereira\u2019s moving his head as he\u2019s hitting him. I think Herb Dean is unfortunately catching a lot of flack, as well. It\u2019s so crazy to go to a fight and everyone boo Herb Dean. I feel bad for the guy. I don\u2019t think [Gane\u2019s] a purposeful cheater at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just going to leave this here.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s just a little careless and that\u2019s been enabled by the way the sport is officiated. And I think it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Even if I don\u2019t think Gane is an \u201cintentional cheater\u201d, I couldn\u2019t disagree more with Cruz\u2019s \u2018blame the victim\u2019 take here.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Whose fault is it for an eye poke? The poker or the poke-ee?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominick Cruz had T.J. Dillashaw on his YouTube show recently to chum it up and talk about lots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-946097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946097","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=946097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}