UFC fighters will now be allowed to wear Neoprene sleeves after the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports approved two new rules.
Eye poking has been an issue which has continued to cause controversy in UFC and MMA in general, and it came back into the spotlight recently when Sean O'Malley's fight with Pedro Munhoz was ruled as no contest. O'Malley accidentally poked his rival in the eye, which left Munhoz unable to continue and the pair were left extremely frustrated.
Calls were made for Munhoz to have been given time to recover from the incident before the decision was accepted, in a similar way to the rules of an accidental low blow. The ABC's annual conference took place this week with rule changes discussed within the MMA community.
A range of topics are discussed including weight cutting, fighter safety and open scoring with voting on rules also permitted for members of the organisation. Most significantly, a rule for the eye poke has now been passed with fighters now given five minutes to recover from an incident within a fight.
This will follow the same ruleset as groin strikes, in which a fighter will be handed five minutes to recover from the incident with the action allowed to be resumed at the injured fighter's discretion. Should the fighter be left unable to continue and the clock expires, the referee will call off the bout and rule it as a no contest.
According to the prior rulebook, fighters were only allowed to be awarded timeouts by the officials if the incident was deemed serious enough to warrant a break in action. The second rule that has been altered is the use of Neoprene sleeves on legs and ankles. The prior laws indicated that fighters would only be allowed to wear them in the case that they are approved at the discretion of the fighting commission.
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However in another alteration, fighters will now be universally allowed to use the Neoprene sleeves on knee and ankle joints without seeking permission of commissioning bodies. The full rule was clarified by the ABC, which said: “A competitor may use soft neoprene-type sleeves to cover only the knee or ankle joints. Approved sleeves may not have padding, velcro, plastic, metal, ties, or any materials considered to be unsafe or that may create an unfair advantage.
"Neoprene sleeves are not considered equipment or clothing and may not be grabbed advantageously inside or as clothing can be grabbed by self. Tape and gauze or any materials other than the approved sleeves are not permitted on the lower body. The sleeves must be black in colour with the exception of matching the athletes commission-assigned corners with the sleeves being blue or red or coloured as appropriate.”
In one of the most high-profile instances that the new rule would be applied, heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou used a sleeve to protect his knee during his title defence against Ciryl Gane after suffering a knee injury in the build-up.
