Tom Aspinall left UFC 321 as heavyweight champion after a double eye poke led to a no-contest in his clash with Ciryl Gane, and has since faced criticism from fellow fighters despite being on the receiving end of the illegal blow.
Ismael Bonfim, who returns to the octagon Saturday in Las Vegas against Chris Padilla, sympathizes with Aspinall after leaving the octagon this year with an eye injury.
“Marreta” ate a question mark kick to the face against Nazim Sadykhov in February and couldn’t see out of his right eye, resulting in a doctor stoppage. Days later, doctors discovered the kick caused an orbital bone fracture.
“Before it happened to me I would probably say, ‘Oh, no big deal, [Aspinall] can come back,’” Bonfim told MMA Fighting. “But only after it happened to me I saw it’s such a sensitive part of our body. Especially the way Ciryl Gane did, poking both eyes. Brother, you can’t go back. If you go back you’ve already lost 50 percent of the fight.”
“We have to respect the doctor and the fighter’s opinion because only the fighter knows,” he continued. “Sometimes the coach, the doctor, even the referee will put some pressure [to continue], but only the ones who got hit or poked in the eye will truly know if they can go back or not.”
Unlike in Aspinall’s case, Bonfim’s vision was affected by a legal strike, and now knows “it was the right call to stop the fight because I could make it worse in the second round.”
“I couldn’t see out of my right eye,” Bonfim said. “When I went back to my corner I looked at my brother [Gabriel Bonfim] and said, ‘I can’t see anything.’ He was like, ‘Calm down, calm down, it will come back.’ I only started seeing again on Wednesday. I fought Saturday, and could only see 100 percent again on Wednesday. It was all blurry on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. …
Bonfim said his loss to Sadykhov was “a lesson learned” because he felt in perfect control up until the strike that fractured his orbital bone, and it took him days to finally get over it. Bonfim volunteered to fight less than a month later, but was forced to be on the sidelines for longer.
Feeling “100 percent” now after being part of his brother’s previous camp for Stephen Thompson in July and now for the main event of UFC Vegas 111, where Gabriel faces Randy Brown, the lightweight talent vows to finish Padilla inside the distance at UFC APEX.
“He’s a tough guy who’s coming off three wins in a row in the UFC,” Bonfim said. “I haven’t seen much of [his videos], though. To be honest, I don’t like to watch stuff. I leave it to my coaches. Sometimes we study our opponents so much we lose what we do best out of worry of what they do. I’ll go back to being the Ismael of old, aggressive, going for the knockout at all times.”
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