Gane poked Hokit in the eye at UFC 334. The record says it was the sixth time — and he has never lost a point for it

Gane went on to beat Hokit by unanimous decision, 48-47 on all three cards, and retain the heavyweight title at UFC 334 on Saturday at Madison Square Garden. Hokit fought on, and afterward he said what the poke had cost him: "I saw triple the whole fight… but f*** it." He also posted "Immediate rematch, please," tagging Dana White, Hunter Campbell and Mick Maynard.

Hokit had spent the entire build-up warning about exactly this. He trained blindfolded and had himself pepper-sprayed in camp. He wore goggles, an eye patch and a cup to the press conference. He told Fox Sports Australia: "If he wants to eye poke me, I'll hit him in the back of the head." In the cage afterward, he told Gane: "You're tougher than I thought." And he told Joe Rogan: "I will never lose hope. I will be champion one day."

Gane, in his post-fight interview with Rogan, praised Hokit — "People underestimated him, but not me; it was a tough fight" — but no source in the post-fight coverage has Gane addressing the eye poke itself. White, for his part, said he scored the fight 4-1 for Gane.

The poke was not a first. The sources document landed eye pokes by Gane in six UFC fights across seven years. Don'Tale Mayes in 2019, in a fight where Gane also kicked him in the groin in round two and tried to poke him again almost immediately after Mayes recovered. Jairzinho Rozenstruik in 2021, poked in rounds two and three of a fight that also featured three low blows — warnings only, no point taken. Alexander Volkov in 2021, three pokes — two in round two, one in the final minute of round five — after referee Herb Dean had already warned Gane about the eye pokes. No point taken. Serghei Spivac in 2023, poked in round one. Tom Aspinall in 2025. And now Josh Hokit in 2026.

There is one more documented incident in the pattern: Junior dos Santos in 2020, where Gane swiped at his face and narrowly missed, and referee Mark Smith warned him to close his fingers before the restart. A warning, not a landed poke.

The count the sources support is six fights with documented landed eye pokes, in 15-plus UFC fights. That is the traced number. The owner's framing — "basically every fight" — is not what the sources support. What is documented in nearly every fight is some foul: groin strikes, back-of-the-head shots, a fence grab. The eye pokes are the sharpest part of a broader pattern.

The Aspinall fight is where the pattern turned career-altering. At 4:35 of round one at UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi, Gane poked Aspinall during an exchange. The poke appeared to make contact with both of Aspinall's eyes, though it primarily impacted the right. Aspinall got five minutes, told officials he still could not see, and referee Jason Herzog stopped it. A no contest — the first time a UFC title fight has ended in a no contest because of an accidental foul. Aspinall, in the cage: "Guys, I just got f—king poked knuckle deep in the eyeball. Why are you booing? What am I supposed to do about it? I didn't do the f—king poke. I can't see!"

Aspinall said afterward that Gane had already been warned twice in the fight before the final poke: "He got warned twice. F—king did it again." He was transported to hospital. Days later his father and coach, Andy Aspinall, said his right eye still saw nothing but grey, and his left eye was 50 percent and really blurry. The diagnosis was significant traumatic bilateral Brown's syndrome. Aspinall underwent four eye surgeries in total, had double-eye surgery in February 2026 and a positive scan in May, then suffered further damage to the right eye in sparring during rematch preparations and vacated the heavyweight title on September 14, 2026. His statement on vacating: "What makes this particularly difficult is that many of the complications I'm dealing with are as a result of fouls that changed the course of my career. Fighters rely on officials to enforce the rules and protect us in those moments."

Gane apologized on the night at UFC 321: "I feel sorry at first, I'm very sorry for the fans. I'm sorry for Tom Aspinall. I'm sorry for myself." White, at the post-fight press conference, said: "I feel the way everybody feels — great showing, shitty ending… I can't make people fight. You definitely can't make somebody continue if they feel they've been injured. Only Tom knows what happened." On a rematch: "Yeah. Total pain in the ass, but yes… [we'll make it happen] as soon as possible." On eye pokes generally: "Just happens. Yeah. I mean, no matter what you do with the glove, they're going to happen." The rematch White promised never happened. An interim belt was created in March 2026, Gane won it against Alex Pereira at UFC Freedom 250 in June, and he was elevated to undisputed champion when Aspinall vacated in September.

And the official consequence record for Gane, across every documented incident, is this: zero points deducted in his entire UFC career. Zero fines. Zero suspensions. No commission action found in any source, for any incident, including the title fight that ended in a no contest.

The one systemic response after UFC 321 was aimed at everyone, and it has never been applied to Gane. Veteran referee Herb Dean said on Michael Bisping's Believe You Me podcast that officials had agreed to actually enforce the existing rule: "So we made a rule, it's a foul to extend the fingers towards the eyes. That's the rule we've already had in place. So that rule has been there, but we haven't been enforcing it. So we're going to move forward on that… We should start taking points by them doing that action before it actually happens to hurt somebody." Dean later did deduct a point for a first-offence eye poke — from Zachary Reese at UFC Vegas 123 on November 1, 2026. Not from Gane.

The glove saga runs alongside it. The UFC introduced redesigned "3Eight/5Eight" gloves at UFC 302 in June 2024, partly to reduce eye pokes, then abandoned them and reverted to the old design in November 2024, fully back by February 2025, after fighter complaints. In June 2026 White said talks over Trevor Wittman's curved ONX gloves had stalled because "they wanted like $100 million for the gloves… We'll fight in the Coliseum before that deal gets done." Wittman says UFC executive Hunter Campbell re-opened the conversation in 2026. Eye pokes occur roughly once every 14 UFC fights and delay bouts about 50 seconds on average, according to UFC Performance Institute research.

Gane has his defenses, and they deserve a hearing. His core one is the Derrick Lewis fight at UFC 265, where the documented poke ran the other way — Lewis caught Gane with an eye poke, and Gane fought on with blurred vision for the rest of the fight. "Brother, you got poked in the eye; you have the right to stop. That's your right. Nobody knows how you experience that pain. It happened to me before, actually, when I fought Derrick Lewis and won the belt. He poked me in the eye, and my vision hadn't recovered, but I kept fighting. I didn't complain about it." He added: "I saw double for 3 or 4 minutes… These things happen, you know what I mean." The Lewis poke is real and documented. It cuts both ways: Gane knows exactly what a poke does to a fighter's vision.

He has also walked back his sharpest words about Aspinall. In September 2026 he called Aspinall "mentally fragile" for how he handled the aftermath, then corrected himself at UFC 334 media day: "The good word was emotional; he was not fragile. Fragile wasn't a good word." At the UFC 334 press conference he rejected the dirty-fighter accusation outright: "I know who I am." His general line is that the fouls are unintentional — on back-of-the-head shots, opponents turn their heads: "Obviously, he's gonna hit the back of his head. You see, these things are trivial. It happens all the time."

Stipe Miocic, in a November interview, defended him: "I believe he deserves to be champion… In regard to the eye poke, why would he do that in the fight? I think he was just doing what he was supposed to do, and I think it was an accidental poke. Gane was in the driver's seat and didn't need to do anything reckless." Demetrious Johnson has argued elements of Gane's style produce unintentional fouls.

The critics name names. Chael Sonnen, after UFC 321: "He's a cheater. He cheated multiple times… It wasn't an eye poke. It was a double eye poke. It wasn't one finger went knuckle deep. Two fingers. Slow it down. Both of them go knuckle deep." Alexander Volkov, on the Ariel Helwani Show in September 2026: "He does dirty things. He puts his finger in an opponent's eye and then says, 'This guy is mentally fragile because I poked him and he doesn't want to fight.' You cheated. That's not within the rules… He created a situation where the champion needed surgery and now can't fight… I can't say he does it on purpose, but he keeps doing it." Those are opinions, and they are carried here as opinions — every source calls the pokes themselves accidental.

There is also what the record does not contain, and the article says so plainly. No eye poke by Gane was found against Raphael Pessoa, Tanner Boser, Francis Ngannou, Tai Tuivasa, Jon Jones — whose fight turned on an opening-seconds low blow, not a poke — Volkov in the rematch, or Alex Pereira. Gane never fought Jailton Almeida in the UFC; a social-media clip circulating this weekend claiming a Gane poke "against Almeida" is mislabeled footage, and no opponent named Coulter appears on his record.

Coaches have already adapted to the pattern. Xtreme Couture head coach Eric Nicksick described the standard counter-move before UFC 334: coaches now raise Gane's fingers with the referee backstage before the fight. "We've had referees give that verbal warning in the back before the fight even starts, 'If you poke him in the eye, I'm taking a point right away.'" At UFC 334, no point was taken. No warning was given. The foul was confirmed on replay, and the fight went on.

The two most recent pokes are back-to-back title fights. One cost Tom Aspinall a year, four surgeries and his title. The other cost Josh Hokit his unbeaten record by one round on every card, after fighting with triple vision. The complete official consequence record for Ciryl Gane across all documented incidents is: warnings.