It Only Took Three Days For Matt Mitrione’s Eye To Look ‘Normal’ Again

Matt Mitrione’s right eye did not have a fun Sunday night. As an Ultimate Fighter, one expects to get banged up during a fight, but what Matt experienced during his fight with heavyweight fighter and Ronda Rousey beau Travis Browne was much worse than typical. He got poked in the eye not once but twice, and wasn’t given enough time to recover from either incident.

He went into the third round seeing double, and afterwards mentioned he actually shut his right eye just so he could see a single fighter in front of him. Unfortunately, that allowed Browne to hit him with a huge overhand that cracked Matt’s orbital bone and led to his defeat. The injury quickly swelled up to egg-shaped proportions, leaving UFC announcers and fans alike horrified.

Fortunately, it was nothing a good doctor couldn’t fix. “Guess who’s got 2 eyes again!” Mitrione gushed on Twitter with a huge smile. “Great big, HELL YES to binocular fusion! Driving back to Purdue from Florida.”

It’ll still take a while for the orbital bone to heal, but Mitrione’s got some time to kill. He went into this match with Browne as the last fight on his contract, so it could take a while for him to come to terms with the UFC or allow their matching clauses to expire so he can take offers from other promotions. That could be a blessing in disguise — it’s worth taking the time to make sure this kind of injury heals properly.

Meanwhile, Mitrione is hoping what happened to him in the cage will lead to some reform in how eye pokes are treated by referees and ringside doctors. Via MMA Fighting:

“I had my eye closed for however long it was closed, like a minute or something like that…that should have been a sign to the doctors and for the referee to be like, ‘hold on, dude’s closing his eye because he can’t focus, we need to call this a no contest. We need to save him from himself, and step in and do something about this.’ Because I’m not going to do that, because I’m too grindy and gritty and I want my paycheck. But it’s not a safe way for the sport to evolve.”
…
“That’s the thing man, it shouldn’t be up to me, the guy who lives his life to compete to make a decision,” he said. “It should be up to the commission, the doctors and the referee to realize the dude is fighting with one eye closed, and he’s complaining about seeing double.”

At the very least, Travis Browne should have been docked a point after the second eye poke. The guy pulled a Jon Jones and had his fingers extended outwards for the entire fight. When you do that and ‘accidentally’ poke your opponent in the eyes, that should be a point. Because right now we have rules about eye pokes that seem to fail fighters in every way.