Best way of dealing with eye pokes?

With the Bisping result of course the eye poke issue comes up again. I am a firm believer that disqualifications for eye pokes intentional or unintentional will quickly see a massive reduction in eye poles. But this is IMO of course and many people disagree and think it is an equipment issue.

We've talked about the issue before but maybe somebody has new thoughts.

I dunno...I think I tend to say leave it the way it is...it's part of the game, it sucks yes...but we have two people fist fighting, it's one of those things that is going to happen. I'm sure there are occassions where it's planned by a shady opponent to throw off the other guys game...but for the most part, I don't see too many guys that WANT to eye poke the other guy. Just like an unintentional head butt or groin kicks. The more they try to adjust the rules and equipment for these things, the more we'll end up wearing boxing gloves and judo helmets and it won't be the traditional MMA anymore that we've grown to love.

Agree with Samger2.
I would say:
1. Warning/Point deduction (refs decision based on severity and/or egregiousness)
2. Point deduction
3. Disqualification after 2 point deductions.

I have no problems at all with point deductions, as I am generally not a fan of fights going to decisions anyway. I do have a problem with stopping too many fights due to unintentional eye pokes.

I don't love the idea of leaving it up to the refs to decide the severity of punishment and/or the intend of the offending fighter. The refs don't seem to be able to handle their current responsibilitites half of the time, so I'd hate to give them another judgement call to add to the list.
I think there has got to be a better glove design out there somewhere. That's the only way I can see this problem being genuinely corrected. I don't want to see fighters disqualified for unintentional eye pokes, but I also don't want to see a guy get his eye finger-fucked 9 times in a fight and have nothing done about it because they were "unintentional" eye pokes.

samger2 wrote:

I dunno...I think I tend to say leave it the way it is...it's part of the game, it sucks yes...but we have two people fist fighting, it's one of those things that is going to happen. I'm sure there are occassions where it's planned by a shady opponent to throw off the other guys game...but for the most part, I don't see too many guys that WANT to eye poke the other guy. Just like an unintentional head butt or groin kicks. The more they try to adjust the rules and equipment for these things, the more we'll end up wearing boxing gloves and judo helmets and it won't be the traditional MMA anymore that we've grown to love.

This.

All I can think of is taking away points sooner, eye pokes are serious business, to me that's worse than getting kicked in the nuts.

Also maybe make it so the gloves are less likely to result in eye pokes, but don't hinder grappling. I've read a lot about how the Pride gloves designs made it so that the hand was more naturally relaxed into a fist as opposed to an open hand and have also read that there was less eye poke incidents as a result in Pride.

I also agree with Samger that I don't want the sport to become too "safe" in the sense that everything's watered down, after all nobody forces you to fight.

Wow, I didn't know that about the Pride gloves. If there is a way to have the glove contoured to fit like that... that would definitely be ideal.