{"id":243461,"date":"2025-10-27T12:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/243461\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:50:07","slug":"dana-white-makes-his-feelings-clear-after-eye-poke-controversy-at-ufc-mma-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/243461\/","title":{"rendered":"Dana White makes his feelings clear after eye poke controversy at UFC – MMA – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC chief Dana White<\/a> refrained from supporting Tom Aspinall<\/a> after his bout with Ciryl Gane<\/a> was controversially stopped due to an eye poke<\/a>, with Jon Jones mocking the British fighter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aspinall was defending his UFC<\/a> heavyweight title for the first time in Abu Dhabi when the match was abruptly ended in the first round after Gane’s fingers made contact with both of Aspinall’s eyes. The champion was left with impaired vision, and the fight was called off, declared a no-contest, and Aspinall was rushed to the hospital.<\/p>\n

Despite the crowd’s boos, Aspinall expressed his frustration, but UFC CEO White later commented: “I feel the way everybody feels. Great showing, s—– ending. I think that after the [Jon] Jones fight, a lot of people wrote Ciryl Gane off. He looked damn good tonight. It looked like we were in for a few rounds, and it was going to be a good fight.<\/p>\n

“I can’t force people to fight. If I want to arrange a bout, I can’t force people to fight. You certainly can’t make somebody carry on if they feel they’ve been injured. Only Tom knows what occurred. Could he see? Couldn’t he see? Could he continue? Only he knows that.”<\/p>\n

White did confirm plans for an immediate rematch between the top heavyweight contenders. “It’s total pain in the a—, but yes,” he said. “They’re both in shape, other than whatever’s wrong with his eye. Both guys are not injured. [We will do it] as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

“It’s unfortunate that it ended the way that it did. And yes, I think that there probably will be a lot more interest after they saw [how Gane performed]. He had Tom bloodied up and Tom didn’t want to continue in the fight. The rematch is very interesting.”<\/p>\n

Gane, however, who had previously lost title challenges to Jon Jones and Francis Ngannou, denied allegations that he had intentionally poked Aspinall. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he clarified. “I know what it is to have an eye poke because when I fought Derrick Lewis, I got an eye poke, and I was fighting two Derrick Lewis’s for a full round. So, I know how it is.<\/p>\n

“I think I started very well, because everybody knows the strategy. Every time he started really hard and surprised his opponent. I think I did very well. We defended the takedown. I touched him. We saw some blood on his nose. It was a really great first round. That’s why maybe I was a little bit disappointed, a little bit sad about this issue, but this is a sport.<\/p>\n

“I knew he loves to start really fast, so I was touching him. I was defending the takedown. In the middle of the first round, I was feeling myself in a certain flow. I started to understand really well what was happening. I thought I would end this fight… I was ready for absolutely everything, for the wrestling, for the grappling, for the striking.<\/p>\n

“I was working on also a lot of good things that I used to show, and I used to like. The creativity in the striking is my thing. It’s absolutely something I wanted to show off today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC chief Dana White refrained from supporting Tom Aspinall after his bout with Ciryl Gane was controversially stopped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,14893,10359,114375,641,638,11571,82,1972,640,14894],"class_list":["post-243461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ciryl-gane","tag-dana-white","tag-eye-poke-controversy","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-mma-section","tag-sports","tag-tom-aspinall","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-321"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}