UFC debut imminent
Now for eye and dick pokes. Admittedly, I think crotch shots are one of those things that can never be accurately or fairly policed in the octa-cage-ring. I think the current way they deal with crotch shots is actually okay; points have been taken away from dudes who have played Rock Band on peoples gonads one too many times. Eye pokes are a different story.
UFC 159 showed us that there really is no idea on how to deal with debilitating eye pokes. When Gian Villante got poked in the eye by Ovince St. Preux, referee Kevin Mulhall acted like Villante's eye fell out of the socket and stopped the fight immediately. It went to a technical decision where the judges had to score a 30 second round. The other eye poke was by infamous rule forgetter Michael Bisping and his win could pretty much count as a TKO rather than a technical decision. Both fighters guilty of the eye pokes shrugged it off and did their best Gus Johnson impression of "these kinda things just happen in MMA."
Unfortunately these things do happen in MMA, but it's not from some mystical force out of fighters control. A lot of the eye pokes happen from a fighter engaging then reacting to the other fighter's movement with a swift unclenching of the fist to a finger in the eye. I think this happens because they instinctively get ready to grab the fighter or get the fighter at distance. This problem would be fixed if they took a point away from the fighter guilty of eye poking when going in to the technical decision, but perhaps a new problem would arise: fighters may embellish an eye poke if they think they are ahead on the scorecard. It seems that employing the one warning system proposed for cage/shorts grabbing wouldn't work here either. The chance of a fight ending from one or two eye pokes seems to be higher than a fight ending from fence grabbing, unless the octagon walls become electrified TNA Lockdown style.
One clear eye poke with anything except the thumb should be enforced with taking away one point immediately, no warnings. Fighters have full control of their hands and need to train themselves to not open those fists up to feel some sweet teary eyeballs. Thumbs don't get a free pass, but it certainly seems possible that an accidental thumb to the eye can still happen with a closed fist.
The downside about enforcing these standards suddenly is that during the first few months fighters will be made examples of, and even though it is kind of their faults it still would be something I would feel bad about. But I think there is no denying that once said fighters get made an example of then every MMA camp would be training fighters to stop forgetting those gosh darn rules.