Justin Tafa saw his main card fight with Austen Lane come to a painful stop just 29 seconds into the action on Saturday night after he suffered a gruesome poke to both of his eyes at the same time from his opponent’s outstretched hand.
The action was halted and Tafa was given five minutes to recover, but it evident pretty quickly that he wasn’t going to be able to continue, with one eye in particular being left bleeding and badly swollen by the impact, and sure enough the doctor eventually waved the fight off and it was declared a no-contest.
“Justin Tafa… I apologize,” Lane had previously wrote in the aftermath of the fight. “Not how I wanted it to go down. That s*** is on me and I hope your eye is alright.”
Despite that apology, Tafa was left frustrated on the night of the incident, believing that a ‘no-contest’ was the wrong outcome.
“I deserve my win bonus,” Tafa had wrote. “That’s a [disqualification] man.”
Fight result aside, the health of Tafa’s eyes was clearly the most important issue, and thankfully a few days later Tafa has been able to offer a positive update.
“Cleared of any major damage to both eyes but both eyes did suffer some damage,” Tafa wrote earlier today. “Right eye still in some pain, sensitive to light and blurred vision on the (left) but I thank God nothing that was going to end my career or cause serious damage to my eye.”
