People need to take it easy on Chris Weidman after controversial win

Chris Weidman jumped to immense fame when he KO'd the person that at the time, seemed to be completely invincible and was the face of the sport, Anderson Silva. Unfortunately for Chris, things have gone a little less than perfect for him since that time. Between unimpressive performances, a rather long string of losses, and horrific injuries that ironically were very similar to the one that Silva suffered during their rematch, he has been fading away. Why has the UFC kept him around despite this drop in performance when the same sort of track record would have resulted in the dismissal of almost anyone else? Well, that is anyone's guess. Weidman has been clinging to life, so to speak, as far as even being included in UFC events is concerned for YEARS now and the fact that he is even given a spot on a the lower main card at a Fight Night is a testament to how favored he is compared to other fighters.

He did manage to put on a reasonably impressive performance and appears to have improved quite a bit since the last time we saw him lose, but the entire event is marred by unintentional eye-pokes.

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With the exception of Jon Jones, who is notorious of actually leading in with outstretched fingers that seem intended for eye pokes, fighters don't ever do this on purpose. The nature of the sport though, where a person need to be prepared for takedowns and takedown defense requires that their fingers be open and eye pokes are just going to happen every now and then. Weidman himself was poked in the eye during this rather bizarre fight vs. Bruno Silva and I believe that this is the first time that a double eye poke happened in the same 1-2 exchange in the history of UFC.

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Here's what you should do when you are poked in the eye during a fight: You back out of the combat position and then complain to the ref. The ref will then make the decision about whether or not you are entitled to a multi-minute time out including bringing the ring doctor in to see if you can continue in the fight. If you cannot the judges then need to determine if the fight is declared a disqualification or a no contest. What you don't do is collapse to the ground as if you had just rocked by punches - which given this particular exchange is something that the ref could have reasonably assumed was the case. It was VERY fast and until they slowed it down nobody out there was an "eye poke expert."

When Bruno collapsed to the ground, Weidman swarmed with ground and pound until the ref called it off as a TKO. Bruno, who was not unconscious started to complain to the ref NOW about the eye-pokes. There was an extensive review of the footage on the part of the officials and in the end Weidman was declared the victor.

There was a lot of people complaining about Weidman cheating and not being deserving of the win but I think this is mostly just the Twitter culture of a lot of the world because people weren't even looking at the reason for the victory.

The fight was called at nearly halfway through the 3rd round and anyone that was actually watching the fight would be aware that the 1st two rounds definitely went to Weidman. Based on how the 3rd round was going up to the eye-poke incident, it is easy to conclude that barring some sort of magical KO punch, Weidman was going to win by unanimous decision anyway. Weidman also likely knew that he was up 2 rounds to 1 and therefore wasn't going to put himself in high-risk situations and this makes the magical KO even more unlikely.

Chris is getting a lot of flak from the MMA community for cheating, but if you simply see the footage, you will see that there was no ill intent on his part. If the MMA world wants to eliminate eye pokes as a possibility then they need to change the gloves. Of course this would severely limit what people can do in grappling situations and therefore, it wouldn't be the same sport anymore.

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Weidman correctly stated the above in the post-fight interview and he was unapologetic for what went down. He is 100% correct about how Bruno should have handled it differently than he did. You should NEVER collapse to the ground when a foul has been committed against you in the hopes of getting a reaction from the officials. This isn't football.