A Cheaters Playground

Eye poking; crotch hitting; shorts grabbing; and fence molesting, no MMA event would be complete without all of these things happening, sometimes all four happen in a single fight.  No doubt there is a rampant cheating problem in MMA. Actually, 'cheating' may carry too harsh a connotation, because I don't think many fighters go into a fight intending to grab the cage or poke dudes in the eye. However, with a lack of enforcement in the cage, fighters don't fear any punishment when they go to their instincts and try to block a takedown attempt with the ole' fencey grabby, or when they start Ric Flairing fighters' eyes (at least that would be my instinct in a fight). Better and more real journalists than me have discussed this issue in a well written and in depth manner but, like Nick Diaz, I too don't get paid enough for this shit, so here we go!

UFC debut imminent

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't think fighters intentionally cheat. I don't think any game plan of any fighter involves trying to look like a WWE heel, but it certainly happens. If a fighter grabs the fence, they are told to stop grabbing the fence. If they grab the fence again, they are told to stop grabbing the fence. If they grab the fence again and mess up a takedown they are told that if they grab the fence again then a point will be taken away. Then the round ends and the cycle repeats. Occasionally a ref will step up and actually dock a point, but it seems to take quite a while for this to happen.

So, let's say I'm a MMA fighter named Benny Forbian and someone goes for a takedown on me, I'm surprised by this takedown and instinctively grab the fence. I don't do this because I think "haha sucker, I'll just cheat" but rather I do this because it is instinct and I have no reason to train myself to try and negate this instinct. A fighter needs to be able to subconsciously know that if they do this they will get penalized quickly. Think about how fast we would see cage or shorts grabbing disappear completely if there was a 'one warning' policy, where a fighter gets one warning, then if it happens again points start getting taken away. It would be a thing that fighters train for rather than just hoping their instincts don't get the best of them.

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.

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