Jon Jones is arguably the best talent for the UFC with a unique fighting style. With an 84.5 inches reach, Jon Jones often hand fights with his opponents. This helps him to measure the distance between him and his opponent. However, in the process, Jones is known to land a couple of eye pokes.
Dominick Reyes, who is scheduled to fight Jon Jones for the UFC light heavyweight championship at UFC 247 looks worried about the same. He has stated his plans to alert the referee about the same. Reyes told MMA Fighting that a potential eye poke could severely compromise him and give Jones an added advantage. Reyes said that he trained through eye pokes to get adjusted to the blurry vision.
Jon Jones responds to Dominick Reyes’ issues with eye pokes
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The light heavyweight champion wasn’t too excited about what Reyes had to say. He stated that Reyes is focusing on the wrong thing.
On a conference call with MMA Fighting, Jones said “I grab for hands a lot, and over the years, I’ve coincidentally landed a few eye pokes. But if you guys think I trained to poke people in the eyes, think about how ridiculous that is. We fight with our fingers open, and I can be a very reachy fighter sometimes, and it happens.”
Watch a must-see knock out win of Dominick Reyes
Jones then proceeded to talk about the second Alexander Gustafsson fight in which the referee kept yelling at him to watch his fingers while they weren’t even out. He went a step further to explain that eye-poking is not a part of his game plan. The champ also stated that it would be beneficial if his opponents think about getting poked in the eye during the fight.
Jon Jones is not the only mixed martial artist to hand fight, other fighters like Daniel “DC” Cormier also employs the same technique. Even DC has poked Miocic multiple times in both their fights. Eyes pokes are a major issue in the UFC and various suggestions have been made to solve it. Will taking away a point without warning or bringing back the Pride FC glove design back solve the issues of eye pokes?
