MMA bantamweight fighter TJ Dillashaw defeated Sandhagen at UFC Fight Night over the weekend, but a cut in his inner left eyebrow very nearly derailed the entire fight and took him out of action. In a new video on his YouTube channel, David Abbasi, MD, a surgeon and pro ringside physician, examines the decision made by the ringside doctor on Fight Night to allow Dillashaw to continue with the match after his injury.
“Cuts in that area will naturally flow down and the blood will flow down into the eye and potentially affect vision,” he says. “The other thing with his specific cut is that it was very severe in the way it was extended down, and the worry was that it would potentially go all the way down into the eye socket area, because a cut can continue to propagate if it continues to get punched.”
There are a couple of factors that go into making that call as a ringside doctor, Abbasi explains. Firstly, it comes down to the personal comfort level of the medic present, and that can vary. “There’s a lot of pressure for ringside doctors,” he says. “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t… If you stop it, you’re going to have an angry fighter and angry fans. If you don’t, you’re going to get criticized for maybe that’s not the safest thing to do.”
Abbasi continues that Dillashaw himself did something very significant that may have affected the outcome of the doctor’s decision. “As we come in and assess that fighter, we ask them questions, we’re looking for body language, we’re looking responses, does that fighter really want to continue the fight… TJ Dillashaw says ‘absolutely I can.’ It was a very positive response… A lot of times you can tell by the body language or the response of the fighter whether they want to continue or not.”
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