A Brutal Eye Poke Just Ended Our UFC Main Event
Fuuuuck - my eyes are watering even imagining what Belal Muhammed is going through right now.
Tonight's main event had a fantastic story leading into it....Leon Edwards, one of the best welterweights in the world, was stepping back into the octagon for the first time since July 2019 to take on Belal Muhammed, who took this fight on short notice after picking up his last win just a month ago today. If Edwards left with a victory, he was guaranteed a title shot, and if Muhammed came out on top - it mighta been hard to deny him one, as well.
Neither of those outcomes happened, though, because the fight was called in the second round after an accidental eye poke from Edwards left Muhammed unable to compete.
Muhammed was rolling around, writhing in pain, and quite literally crying blood in the octagon. Never seen anything like it. Immediately, he said he couldn't see a thing, which is obviously incredibly scary, so nobody fucked around and Herb Dean ruled it a no contest right then and there, ending the night. Best of luck to Belal on gettin that vision back tonight.
If the UFC used the old school PRIDE-style gloves that Bellator uses (or Trevor Wittman's ONX gloves), we'd likely see way less eye pokes in the cage....
Before the eye poke, Edwards looked phenomenal, with no signs of ring rust in sight - but he did get warned about extending his fingers outwards, making this feel a little worse.
I don't know what you do next here if you're the UFC. I do think Edwards clearly had the better of Belal in the cage, but you obviously can't give him a title shot off of that. You may need to run this back.
What a shitshow.