Jimmie Rivera suffered a severe eye injury in his bantamweight clash with Urijah Faber at UFC 203, and he’s not sure the eye poke was unintentional.
Rivera scored the biggest win of his MMA career Saturday night in Cleveland, improving to 4-0 under the UFC banner and 20-1 in his MMA career with a decision victory, but an eye poke early in the third round almost ruined his night.
"It was black," Rivera told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour of his reaction after getting poked in the eye. "Once you get poked, until after I got out and was speaking to (Joe) Rogan, I started getting a little vision back. Half of it. Half down I could see, very, very blurry, and half was black."
Rivera knew he was ahead in the scorecards, but was worried that telling the referee he wouldn’t be able to continue in the fight would force a no contest.
"I knew I was up ahead in the cards and I kept asking the ref how much time was left," he said. "I’m trying to go decisions in my head, like if I say no, like I don’t wanna compete, it’s going to be a no-contest. I actually spoke to the doctor that was ringside afterwards in the back, ‘was I close on the numbers? Was I right in the numbers?’ She was like ‘you were pretty close.’ She would put up the fingers and I guessed three, but then she put two (fingers) up and I said one. I was just guessing.
"I was just like, ‘you know what, I’m close, this is a lifetime opportunity. I’m gonna go there and I’m gonna finish this fight. I’m not gonna give up. I’m gonna keep it going. It’s something I gotta do.’"
Rivera wouldn’t call Faber a dirty fighter for hitting him in the eye, but thinks the foul was "a little bit" intentional.
"I don’t know. I think it was a little bit (intentional). I feel like… He hit me in the nuts, and he didn’t really say sorry afterwards," Rivera said. "If you hit someone in the balls or poke in the eye you say I’m sorry, my bad, so I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t (intentional). I don’t really care at this point. I got the W, I got the win over someone that I grew up watching. I grew up watching him as a teenager, as a kid, and it’s unbelievable fighting him.
"I’m surprised that (the referee) didn’t see because the way (Faber) was throwing that left hand, his fingers were open," he added. "It was like a slap. It wasn’t a punch, when you usually have your hands closed. It was a slap. He did it once or twice in the previous rounds."
Rivera will get his eye checked by a specialist on Monday. Right after the bout, doctors said he suffered a "really bad crack behind the retina" and "there’s a scratch that could use stitches on the white part of my eye." Rivera later admitted Monday he'll just need drops and rest for the eye to heal and avoided surgery.
"I didn’t know my eye was open," Rivera recalls. "I was with the eye doctor and she said ‘no, your eye is open.’ And I’m like ‘is it open right now?’ Because I couldn’t see, I thought it was closed shut."
