Hendricks: “…I was seeing double for the first three mintues”

“He landed a lot because he poked my eye and I was seeing double for the first three mintues,” said Hendricks. “I didn’t see clearly again until the second round. So the first round I was trying to circle away and close one eye every so often so I could get a good fix on him and try to throw.”

What made the situation scarier than Hell, was that Hendricks felt he couldn’t do anything about it.

It is standard at a show of the UFC’s magnitude for the ref to individually speak in the locker room with each fighter on the card that he will be officiating, in order to clarify any rules questions. Before UFC on FOX™ 3, during that meeting Johny Hendricks asked referee Kevin Mulhall about what to do if he got accidentally poked in the eye by Josh Koscheck.

“I said, ‘If he pokes me in the eye, what are you doing to do?’ He said, ‘I can’t stop it,'” Hendricks related. “‘You don’t get a five-minute break, and you can’t say you can’t see, or the fights going to be over.'”

So Hendricks fought on, eventually taking a split decision, and with it the possibility of facing the winner of GSP vs. Condit for the world Welterweight championship.

In a post fight interview Ariel Helwani had a blunt question for Hendricks. “Do you think he did that on purpose?” asked Helwani.

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by Kirik Jenness | source: The Underground