In their never-ending search for a magic bullet, and fuelled by their resentment of the success of modern combat sports, many RBSD practitioners will, instead of learning ground fighting, claim that eye gouges, groin strikes and other general nastiness are all that is needed to defeat submission grappling. Or that they will be able to stop a determined attacker with a simple eye jab.
“Real fights are fast, unpredictable and ferocious in which anything goes, violent assailants do not respect rules and have no qualms of gouging eyes, striking throats, stomping or kicking to the head, biting and a whole host of other things... the very notion one would want to engage with an enraged attacker or even worse multiple attackers and try to perform some sort of complex grappling move or technique is foolish at best.”
Al Ridenhour, founder of Warrior Flow Combatives.
The idea that an eye strike will instantly stop a real fight is misguided, to say the least. Not only are there a number of historical examples where this has not happened, but even in sports like MMA, where eye pokes are commonplace, the fight may sometimes be stopped, yet we rarely see a fighter so damaged that he could not continue fighting if it was forced upon him.
History gives us a ton of examples but I’ll just use one, Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart who in 1914 whilst fighting in British Somaliland was shot twice in the face. He lost his left eye and part of his ear. He continued to fight until the battle was over.
In 1995 Gerard Gordeau (from UFC 1, savate world champion and Kyokushin black belt) fought Yuki Nakai in a Vale Tudo match in Japan. He gouged him repeatedly causing Nakai to permanently lose the vision in his right eye. Nakai won the fight by heel hook, refused treatment so he could continue fighting, armbarred Craig Pittman in the next round before advancing to the final where he was beaten by Rickson Gracie.
People being able to continue after severe eye injury however does not mean eye attacks have no utility. They work as a tool not a magic bullet, and that tool needs to be bolted on to an already effective martial base.
The King of Eye Pokes
“I do poke people in the eyes, and it’s very illegal, but I do it. It’s like if someone’s coming at me, I’ll just put my hand on their forehead… and sometimes it lands in people’s eyes. People say ‘Jon, you’re a very talented fighter. You don’t need to use an illegal tactic to be successful.’ I try to tell people it’s not intentional, but now I’m kind of known for it, and it’s working.”
Jon Jones, The Hurt Business
In modern MMA we see eye pokes frequently, often (not always) from tall fighters with long reach using long guards or disrupting an opponent’s offence using outstretched guards.
Jon Jones started his UFC career as he meant to continue, with an eye poke against André Gusmão, already the fourth eye poke of his professional career. A YouTuber called Mad Mozza has counted 33 eye pokes over his 29 fights (I am assuming he is ignoring no contests here): a 114% eye-poke rate. For further evidence, watch almost any of his fights.
Big John McCarthy pushed for a rule change to prevent these eye pokes and in Jan 2017 the Unified Rules were changed making it a foul to extend the arm “with an open hand, fingers pointing at the opponent’s face/eyes.” McCarthy has stated publicly that the rule change was largely due to the eye pokes of John Jones.
Jones’s use and success with eye pokes however does not validate the claims of the RBSD crowd. Firstly Jones is using them as part of a complete game and is arguably the GOAT of MMA. Joe Bloggs who trains with his local Urban Death Krav Maga group in the local church hall on a Wednesday evening is unlikely to have the same success.
Secondly, despite Jones’s fearsome abilities and ruthless use of the technique, he has never actually stopped someone with it. Thirty-three pokes, zero finishes.
The Heir To The Crown
To do this subject justice I have to mention Ciryl Gane and his brutal two-fingered eye poke against Tom Aspinall. This strike did indeed end the fight, and it has already cost Aspinall his belt. He insists he isn’t retiring, but his eye still hasn’t held up to ordinary training, and his career remains very much in doubt.
But look at what actually happened in the cage. Aspinall couldn’t see, and under the rules he didn’t have to continue. Put him in a real fight, with Gane still coming forward, and he would have had to. Watch it back: he’s compromised, not finished. The poke took the fight away from him; it didn’t take away his ability to fight. Effective, certainly. A magic bullet, no.
The Numbers
Whilst I do not have an up to date analysis in his 2016 article Eye Pokes in MMA: Poke to Win Steven Rivers noted that:
53% of fights ended with the eye poker winning
35% saw the victim overcome the eye poke to win
12% ended in draws or both fighters getting poked
And also that fighters who poked their opponents in the first round won 74% of the time.
https://taipeibjj.com/tom-aspinall-eye-poke-mma-statistics/
Eye Attacks In Grappling
Eric Bloodaxe Olsen’s love of the eye attack surpasses even Jon Jones’s. Olsen openly states that he is fighting to gouge eyes and that he wants to touch the skull behind your eye with his fingers and he does this with a look of pure glee.
Olsen however is not a one-trick pony, he uses his wrestling base to get people to the ground. He then advances through positional control until he has your hips and torso pinned and at this point once the position is secured he moves to the eyes. It’s the old school BJJ roadmap but instead of a kimura or choke you have him digging around trying to detach your optic nerve.
“The eye gouge is relative to position. A lot of guys who’ve gouged me did it from underneath me, or standing up, and you’re just asking to get fucked up doing that. I’ve had my eyes gouged, had them ripped and everything. But you have to have position. Position before submission, as they say in jiu-jitsu, and the eye gouge is the ultimate submission.
“Once I pin your hips to the floor, you’re done. If you’re not a jiu-jitsu guy and you don’t grapple: once you’re on the floor and your hips are pinned, your chest is pinned. Once your hips are pinned, your thoraxal region gets pinned, and then your head will start moving, which will get tired.
“The perfect eye gouge would be quite literally straight down till you hit the bone, or you take the fingers and you dig them under the bones in here and I go to the knuckle and I grab like that and I start to rip… and then they’re screaming in Polish and French.” [laughs] “Because I love eye gouging Polish and French people.”
Eric Bloodaxe Olsen, Dean Taylor YouTube interview.
Eric has had success with this technique, stopping at least two fighters in KOTS with it. However this doesn’t support the Tacticools crowd’s defence. Eric uses superior wrestling/submission grappling along with his strength and size to systematically control his opponent before he gouges. Not only that he has a significant stand-up background that allows him to be in the fight both defensively and offensively, before he takes his opponent where he wants them. If Olsen Jiu-Jitsu were a school, the eye gouge would sit in the syllabus next to the kimura and the armbar: taught after the pin, never before it.
The Utility of Attacking The Eyes
It’s pretty clear that eye gouges do work and can give a fighter a marked advantage. But it’s also clear that they rarely stop a fight standing, although they are highly effective when an opponent is pinned (if you are willing to remove an eye from his head). It is also clear that the people who can use them effectively would be fearsome fighters without them. Building a base of fighting ability is far more important; eye attacks are the cherry on the cake.
Legality and Ethical Disclaimer!
I’m not a lawyer, law enforcement officer, referee or moral philosopher. So everything past here is my general opinion and you should make your own decisions based on whatever rules and regulations you are subject to, and of course your own personal moral compass.
Obviously there are massive legal and ethical issues surrounding eye strikes. In most (not all) competitions they are illegal, sometimes punished, sometimes not. In regards to the law you may find yourself in a situation where a standing eye poke is reasonable, necessary and proportionate. Being able to argue the same when you have a man fully controlled on the ground? Much more difficult. You may be judged and punished for your actions whatever they are.
Eye gouges are a tool, nothing more. Have them in your back pocket if you want but concentrate your efforts on learning to fight through proven combat sports not woo woo and the empty promises of the urban ninja larping crowd.