#poatan

If Herb Dean had stepped in when Gane was throwing those illegal shots, the fight could’ve looked very different.

And those shots are dangerous and illegal for a reason: they can be life-changing, even fatal in the worst-case scenario. A strike in the wrong place can literally take away someone’s mobility or even their life. If something like that had happened, we’d be having a completely different conversation right now.

Would Gane probably still have won if Herb had stopped the action and given a warning? Yeah, probably. He’s simply the better fighter at this weight class.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Poatan has every right to be angry. And I’d love to know what the UFC is going to do about it (probably nothing).

In the heat of the moment, I understand one or two shots accidentally landing somewhere they shouldn’t. It happens. Not every foul is intentional.

But a whole sequence of them? That’s different.

And if you don’t hold fighters accountable for that, what message does that send?

Even in the middle of a fight, fighters still have a responsibility to be careful. Poatan himself said that when he knocked out Ankalaev, he was constantly calculating where he could and couldn’t hit because he was targeting the head.