Marc Goddard took a point from Christian Leroy Duncan for an eye poke early in the second round of the UFC Vegas 122 main event, and he did it without the second, sterner warning referees usually hand out first. Fight fans online loved it.
The middleweight headliner against Brendan Allen was competitive from the opening bell. Allen spent the early going complaining to Goddard that Duncan was fighting with his palms open and his fingers drifting toward Allen’s eyes. Goddard gave the British fighter a soft warning about it, and according to Essentially Sports, Duncan didn’t appear to take the hint.
Duncan hadn’t actually poked Allen before the deduction. He’d only been flagged for having his fingers too close. Then, in the opening minutes of Round 2, he landed a clear one, and Goddard went straight to the scorecards instead of the usual routine of a timeout, a lecture and a stern finger wag.
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Duncan didn’t take it well. He came out angrier and more aggressive with a point to make up in one of the biggest fights of his career. It didn’t matter. Allen finished him with a rear-naked choke in the fifth round, so the deduction never got the chance to swing a decision.
The reaction
The ACD MMA account on X summed up the mood in all caps, posting that UFC referees were “FINALLY TAKING POINTS FOR EYE POKES WITHOUT A SECOND WARNING.”
Fans piled on with approval. “THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE!!!!” one wrote. Another posted, “It’s about time these start to get enforced.” The line that got the most mileage was a shot at one of Goddard’s colleagues: “Herb Dean would NEVERRRR.”
At least one fan was already thinking about the heavyweights, writing, “Good. Hope this picks up by the time Gane fights.”
Not everyone signed off without conditions. One reply argued that if this is the standard, it has to be the standard everywhere. That fan wrote, “So now refs have to take a point away for the first foul in every fight moving forward. If not, this is horrible point deduction.”
Quick take
That last guy has a point, and it’s the only one that matters. Goddard did exactly what the rulebook allows. Duncan had been told, he kept his hands open, and he caught a fighter in the eye in a five-round main event. Referees have treated the first eye poke as a free pass for years, and fighters have played the open-hand game because the penalty for getting caught was a short rest for the other guy and a stern talking-to. A point is a real cost, and costs change habits. But one referee doing it on one Saturday night in Las Vegas is a single call. If the next eye poke on a big card gets a timeout and a pat on the shoulder, Duncan has every right to ask why he was the guy who got the strict version. Allen didn’t need the help, by the way. He choked Duncan out in the fifth, which is the cleanest way to make a scoring controversy disappear.
