Jim Miller and Belal Muhammad have separately made the same case for how to solve the issue of eye-pokes in the sport, and it doesn’t involve changing the design of the fighters gloves.

Instead the both argue that the only way to stop it from happening is to punish the fighter who did the poke, whether it was accidental or not.

“If they want to get rid of eye pokes, they need to take a point away instantly,” former welterweight champ Muhammad wrote on X after watching this past weekend’s UFC heavyweight title fight end prematurely after Tom Aspinall was left unable to continue due being poked in both eyes at the same time by Ciryl Gane.

“It has nothing to do with gloves warn them both right when they enter the cage “if there’s an eye poke you lose a point” then guys will train for it .. Black beast said he does it to catch his breathe because there’s no consequences .. taking points right away will stop them or slow them down.”

Meanwhile, Jim Miller has gone on a passionate rant about the problem of eye-pokes, and he too believes that penalizing the instigator is the only way forward.

“I am very agitated, and I think you know exactly where this is going,” Miller said in an Instagram post. “I’m going to share two screenshots of the unified MMA rules at the end of this, and you tell me what the f*ck is going on. … If only, if only stupid, dumb, professional MMA fighters could control our fingers, right?

“Eye gouging, eye poking, is a foul. And if that foul is done with intention, then the fighter that commits the foul gets disqualified if the fight can’t continue. In most cases, there’s some silly sh*t in there as well. But it is up to the referee, and probably the commission on the side of the octagon, to decide whether it was intentional or not. And it never seems to be f*cking intentional.

“I’ve had my vision permanently affected by eye pokes. It doesn’t affect my ability to fight or see anything close, really. It’s more quality of life stuff — it’s much harder to see a target with my bow nowadays. Boo hoo. [But] the only way we’re going to stop this thing is if the fighters that are committing the foul actually end up getting punished for the foul. That’s the only way this is going to stop. It’s not a glove issue; it is an issue of culture and the fighters.”

Miller pointed out the injustice at the criticism that fighters like Aspinall have faced in some quarters for not being able to continue fighting in eye-poke situations.

“The person who was poked in the eye is always the p*ssy, is always the bad guy, is always the loser for not choosing to continue,” Miller said. “It’s never the person that commits the foul that gets looked at in a negative light, no. They’re never punished. No, no, no. It’s the other p*ssy that decides, ‘Hey, I can’t f*cking see, now. And now I’m the bad guy, for telling the doctors that I can’t see because my opponent couldn’t close his fist.’ This aggravates me, clearly. The refs have had the power to stop this for years, and they have chosen not to.

“I’ve known a lot of you for a long f*cking time, and I believe there are a lot of good people that are associated with this sport, but this is nonsense. It is absolute f*cking nonsense. Points get taken away way quicker for groin shots! We have quality protectors on the market; there are high-quality f*cking cups on the market. I’ve been lifted off the ground wearing a metal Thai cup with nothing, didn’t feel nothing, and the other person is moving. The eye poke stuff is all on the person who throws the eye poke. All of it. That’s easy! It’s f*cking easy!”

Not finished there, Miller then went on to point out that despite holding the record for having the most fights in UFC history, he’s never poked someone in the eye – and he’s not the only one.

“I’ve shared the list before,” Miller said. “I’ve shared the list of the guys who have been in the octagon the longest, and none of them have poked somebody in the eye. None of them! If we spent the most time in the octagon, throwing punches at opponents at the highest level of the sport, shouldn’t there be some eye pokes coming from guys like myself or Frankie [Edgar], or [Raphael] dos Anjos, or Clay [Guida], or all these other guys? Shouldn’t that be the way it goes? The more time you spend doing this, the more eye pokes you have because they’re incidental? They’re just part of the sport? It’s not. It’s not a f*cking accident! It’s not a f*cking accident. You can control it. All you have to f*cking do is penalize the motherf*cker that’s doing it.”