Maybe you noticed and maybe you didn’t, but there was something different about UFC 302. Right on the fist of every fighter? That was the latest version of UFC gloves.
This was a development that the UFC was quite excited about. The day before UFC 300 in April, UFC officials gave an entire presentation about the new gloves to media members gathered for the official weigh-ins. We watched a video about the extensive research and development process for the new gloves. We received a handout highlighting all the exciting new innovations packed into these few ounces of protective material. We have to handle them and fit them. (Of course, the first thing I did was stretch out my fingers to see if it was possible to poke someone in the eye. It turns out it was.)
At UFC 302 on Saturday, the new gloves finally made their UFC debut. Any hope of them lowering the frequency of eye pokes seemed to be dashed in the very first fight of the night. By the end of the event, several fighters had ended up with fingers in their eyes. One thing that didn’t happen, however, was a single finish via knockout or TKO.
It’s clearly way too early and the sample size way too small to blame that last statistic on the new gloves. At the post-fight press conference, several fighters said they expected the new gloves to benefit stand-up strikers, with UFC welterweight Randy Brown calling them a “puncher’s glove.”
“But it won’t do anything for eye pokes,” Brown added. “It’s really not going to do anything against eye pokes.”
Randy Brown on the new UFC gloves: It’s definitely a glove for punchers, but as far as eye pokes go, as you can see Saturday night, it won’t really make a difference. #TheMMAHour pic.twitter.com/jvGNXIEWeI
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) June 3, 2024
And yes, it seems like eye pokes were the main glove concern for everyone except the UFC. Perhaps the most striking thing about that new glove presentation in April was that the scourge of accidentally (or not) puncturing the eyes was barely mentioned. Instead, the designers seemed more concerned with the cut and comfort, as well as protecting the hands, without changing the padding in a way that would significantly reduce or increase the knockout rate.
Not that those aren’t important concerns, of course… but what about people’s eyes? When I asked this question, the answer was that designers hoped the greater hand flexibility would reduce eye stings. The thinking there seemed to be that by making it easier for fighters to form a fist in the new gloves, fighters would simply to elect to keep their hands closed more often, resulting in fewer eye pokes.
One thing about these new gloves, as rated by the first fighters to use them in the Octagon, is that they make it easier to form a fist. Some noted that they felt less grip and forearm fatigue from battling the stiffness of the glove. Others said this also made it easier to grab opponents in wrestling scenarios.
Again, all good things. But when it comes to the delicate subject of eyes, are we still hoping that everything will work itself out? It is important not only because it is dangerous to fighters’ health and long-term career prospects to impale each other in the eye, but also because it appears to have the ability to drastically change the outcomes of fights. UFC women’s bantamweight Lauren Murphy recently pointed out a statistic from a judging and refereeing course that noted a study in which the fighter who committed an eye poke in the first round of a fight won that fight a whopping 74% of the time.
It’s a tricky problem to solve for a number of reasons. You could argue that referees need to become more aggressive in taking points away from fighters who can’t keep their fingers to themselves, and that argument has merit. But if you puncture someone’s eye in the first round and reduce their vision enough to help you knock them out in the second round, it’s still worth it.
For years, accidental eye pokes during UFC fights were the trigger commentator Joe Rogan needed to rant about glove design. If only we had something with more curve, he’d say, something that made it harder to stretch those fingers toward an opponent’s eyes. Then, what seemed like ages later, a brand new glove design appeared. And that design instead made it easier to poke someone in the eye, while also providing more hand comfort.
That’s not to say the new UFC gloves are bad. Fighters at UFC 302 generally seem to like them, although a few also said they didn’t really care one way or the other. It just seems strange to rework the gloves to address issues that no one else really brought up, while ignoring the big one that still hangs right in front of our faces like an outstretched finger.
