Joe Rogan has been vocal about the persistent problem of eye pokes in mixed martial arts. During his conversation with Olympic gold medalist and MMA star Gable Steveson on a JRE episode, he laid out his position with characteristic directness.
“I think every time a guy gets poked in the eye, one point deduction immediately, instantly, maybe even two points,” Rogan stated emphatically. “You should never do that to a person. Never.”
The UFC commentator’s frustration with the issue stems from watching countless match affected by eye pokes, including recent high-profile bouts. He referenced the Tom Aspinall versus Ciryl Gane bout, where Aspinall suffered significant eye damage that required multiple surgeries.
“The right eye, that’s the problem,” Rogan explained. “But if you look at when he fought, his left eye, the finger went deeper in his left eye than it did his right eye. So if you think he’s faking it, he was knuckled deep in that f**king left eye.”
Rogan noted that Aspinall underwent multiple eye surgeries and neck surgery following the bout, dismissing critics who questioned the severity of the injuries. “By the time a statement goes out, I’ll probably have surgery on one eye already. Neck surgery is coming mid January. So, he’s having surgery on both eyes?”
The podcast host acknowledged that competitors will always face skepticism when claiming eye poke injuries. “The problem is people are always going to doubt you when you get poked in the eye. There’s always going to be a bunch of people like, ‘Oh, you’re fine.’ Because people have gotten poked in the eye and they have continued fighting.”
However, Rogan emphasized that continuing to fight after an eye poke is not necessarily the smart decision. “But is that smart? It’s a foul,” he said.
Beyond simply increasing penalties, Rogan proposed a radical solution to the eye poke problem: redesigning MMA gloves. “Why are the fingers out in the first place? Why don’t they cover that up? Like, why don’t they have it like one of those Everlast bag gloves, like a mitten where it’s like a mitt?”
He explained his reasoning: “Have the thumb out because you don’t grapple with these anyway. You don’t do this. You never do this. So, why do the fingers have to be loose? If you grapple, you’re grappling like this or like this. You’re never clenching your hands together like this. You never interlace your fingers together. So, why are they open in the first place when it only causes problems?”
Rogan argued that a mitten-style glove would eliminate most eye poke incidents without compromising the sport. “If they developed an MMA glove that covered the tips of the fingers like a mitten, we would have way less problems with this. You’d occasionally probably have a thumb in the eye every now and again, but you would have at least eight less possibilities for each fight of things going into your eye.”
He also suggested such a design might even improve grappling. “It wouldn’t hinder grappling. You just have a thin piece of leather that you know the padding goes over the knuckles, the piece of leather goes over the tip of the fingers and have it come down like this, like a mitten.”
When discussing specific competitors and their tendencies, Rogan praised Merab Dvalishvili’s approach. “One thing you notice about Petr Yan’s fight with Morab, he fights like this. His hand is in a fist. So when he’s got his hand up like this and the front hand’s extended, he’s not doing that.”
The commentator expressed bewilderment that after more than three decades of modern MMA, the sport still uses gloves that facilitate eye pokes. “I don’t understand for the life of me how the sport’s been around since 1993 and no one has introduce gloves like that.”
Rogan’s position is clear: eye pokes represent a serious safety issue that demands immediate point deductions and long-term equipment solutions.
