Eye pokes are an injury that impact a fight as well as a fighter. The current style of glove that UFC utilizes leaves the fingers exposed. This provides absolutely no help or guard to prevent eye pokes.

It has been voiced for several years now that there are dangers and disadvantages of the open-finger UFC glove. In a MMA Mania article, it is mentioned that "Some, like Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) color commentator Joe Rogan, think changing the style of the gloves could limit, if not erase, the incidents altogether." In that same article, it states Dana White's opinion which states that "one way to prevent eye pokes is to simply take away one point for every infraction."

While these both seem to be good ideas and have been apparently under the scope of the UFC for several years now, neither has been acted upon.

As seen in the events of Browne v. Mitrione on January 17th, 2016, eye pokes can do severe damage to a fighter's vision and impact the fight. As written by Damon Martin for Fox Sports, "Mitrione actually suffered two separate eye pokes from Browne during the fight in the same right eye that looked like it might stop the fight when the doctor was forced to look at him on the second occasion."

After the eye pokes, Mitrione became disoriented and could not see the strikes coming, which eventually led to the finish and victory from Browne. Up until the two destructive eye pokes, Mitrione was controlling the fight with good striking. When watching the fight, the impact of the eye pokes was clearly visible, but perhaps not until the end was the damage clear. Mitrione's eye was engulfed in a hematoma due to a broken orbital bone. Also, he believes as a result of the eye pokes, he received a shoulder injury later on in the fight.

On Twitter, Mitrione voiced his concerns over the eye pokes, saying the following, "Broken orbital floor. This and the shoulder happened after the 2nd eye poke. I don't think they would've happened [otherwise]" as well as "The eye pokes had an effect but things happen."

Bellator Fighting Championship, a competitor to the UFC has changed their gloves to Pride FC style gloves. After this change, they say there has been proven data that shows that the new gloves has decreased the amount of damage from eye pokes, as well as hand breaks in fighters.

"Since the new gloves debuted at Bellator 110, Bellator has held nine events and experienced zero hand breaks inside the Bellator cage. By way of comparison, Bellator Season 8 saw eleven events using the old glove design, and included eight broken hands during the season, including welterweight champion Douglas Lima and lightweight standouts Saad Awad and Alexander Sarnavskiy. Bellator’s ninth season also featured eleven events, and saw seven fighters suffer breaks, including Herman Terrado, Joe Taimanglo and once again, Douglas Lima."

There needs to be a change in the UFC gloves and a simple alternative would be changing to Pride-style gloves. There have been years of proof that show that this would be better for the fighters, preventing injury and poor performance, as well as better for the fans in making the fights more fun to watch with less unnecessary damage that can hinder action and entertainment.