UFC Vet Who 'Exposed' Eye-Poke Rules Comments on Tom Aspinall Incident

The UFC veteran who is best qualified to comment on eye pokes has given his view after the Tom Aspinall vs Ciryl Gane controversy.

Aspinall's first UFC heavyweight title defence ended in a no-contest with 15 seconds remaining of round one in the UFC 321 main event after Gane caught the champion with fingers in both eyes.

Aspinall was left unable to see out of his right eye despite being attended to by a doctor and referee Jason Herzog ultimately had to bring a wholly disappointing and premature halt to proceedings.

The 32-year-old went straight to hospital in Abu Dhabi for tests and is to be further assessed in the United Kingdom.

The incident has caused mass uproar in MMA, with Aspinall's fellow British UFC fighter Paddy Pimblett calling for different gloves as a way to clamp down on eye pokes - a view expressed on many an occasion by UFC commentator Joe Rogan.

Aspinall's fight was called a no-contest after an eye poke. Image: Getty

UFC legend exposes eye poke truth

However, UFC legend Jim Miller has been extremely vocal about eye pokes, having suffered permanent damage during his career - which brought the most fights and victories in the promotion's entire history with 46 and 27 respectively.

A previous clip of him talking on the matter went viral and on Sunday, he quickly took to Instagram to share a rant on the matter following on from the Aspinall stoppage.

He then appeared on Ariel Helwani's show and stressed that the approach with eye gloves needs to change drastically - to the point that fines are issued for culprits.

"No one is ever held accountable for their actions," Miller said on The Ariel Helwani Show, as per Uncrowned.

“I've put on UFC gloves 46 times to fight in the Octagon. Do [the gloves] affect your ability to fully close your hand? Yes, they do. But they don't affect your ability to at least partially close [your hand].

"There's obviously material in the palm of your hand when you're wearing an MMA glove and a wrap. So you can't do 'fine' stuff. You're not going to do brain surgery wearing a pair of UFC gloves, but you can close your hand — and when fighters don't close their hand, that's when the eye-pokes happen. And no one seems to be held accountable when it actually does."

He added: "If I show up three weeks prior to a fight and I get cut, then it opens back up and the commission finds out, I'm getting suspended for that. But we attack somebody's eyeball and we don't get even a little bit of a suspension or even a fine? It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy to me. They're fouls, but we don't treat them like fouls. So how do we prevent the behaviour if we don't actually penalise it?"

"In the UFC, we don't kick each other to the head when the opponent is on the ground because we lose, because they have a very good track record of penalising people that do so.

“I believe that if we brought in fines [for eye-pokes] — the warning is in the back. If you're going to take my money away, I'm going to make sure that my hands are closed when I'm reaching out. I'm going to make sure that I don't poke somebody in the eye. But they're not really penalising people. The thing is, a lot of the time, when somebody gets poked in the eye, their chances of victory are super slim."

Miller weighed in with strong views on UFC's issue with eye pokes. Image: Getty

Miller went on to say that he believes the issue of eye pokes is a cultural thing, stressing that he never had any problems and neither did his fellow vets Donald Cerrone, Frankie Edgar, Clay Guida and Rafael dos Anjos despite racking up extensive periods inside the Octagon.

But the 57-fight star now fears that the worst case scenario could be on the cards unless UFC make a swift change imminently.

"If it continues the way it's going, unfortunately, we're probably going to see someone lose an eye in the Octagon,” Miller stated.

"If we don't start punishing the foul in one way or another, whether that is with a monetary fine or if that is with immediate points being taken away, the behaviour is just going to continue. "And sooner or later, something worse is going to happen."

Aspinall's best case scenario appears to be a potential rematch with Gane on December 6, UFC's final pay-per-view of the year - but that would depend on the severity of his eye injury.