The King is Dead, Long Live the Safety Goggles?
So, the great ‘Triple C’ is hanging up his crown, but not before delivering a final, tearful sermon on workplace safety?
And what a glorious way to go out. Not with a bang, but with a whimper about occupational hazards. Because Henry Cejudo, the man who called himself ‘Triple C’ until our ears bled, the Olympic gold medalist, the two-division destroyer who built a career on chaos and cringe-worthy self-promotion, has found his final calling as the self-appointed hall monitor of mixed martial arts. It’s just beautiful. The little warrior king, about to ride off into the sunset of UFC 323, has decided his legacy won’t be the belts or the Olympic gold, but a sternly-worded memo about fingers going where they don’t belong. He’s a legend. But now he wants to be the guy who puts up the ‘Days Since Last Accident’ sign in the UFC breakroom. You have to laugh. This is the man who carried around a pillow of his own face and now he’s suddenly concerned with the finer points of ophthalmological integrity in cage fighting, a sport where the primary goal is to render another human unconscious through blunt force trauma.
Because after years of watching men get their corneas scraped like cheap lottery tickets, Cejudo has had an epiphany right at the finish line. ‘Everybody needs to man up… including Dana White,’ he preaches. And it’s a brilliant move, really. You can’t accuse him of trying to get an advantage. He’s leaving. It’s the ultimate mic drop, a performative act of sagely wisdom from a man who once dressed as a matador to promote a fight. So is this genuine concern for his fellow gladiators, or is it the most calculated, self-serving legacy-buffing exercise in the history of the sport? Yes. It’s both, and that’s what makes it so damn funny. It’s a perfect microcosm of his entire career: brilliant, effective, and profoundly, profoundly weird.
The Great Unsolvable Riddle of the Finger in the Eye
But let’s be honest, he’s not wrong, is he? The UFC’s approach to eye pokes is a complete clown show.
Oh, absolutely. But that’s the punchline. Of course he’s right. Because the UFC, this multi-billion dollar global juggernaut, has the same official policy on eye pokes as a daycare center has for toddlers: a stern ‘no, no!’ and a brief timeout. It’s pathetic. For decades, we’ve watched pivotal fights grind to a screeching halt because one guy’s finger decided to explore the other guy’s optic nerve. We saw Leon Edwards vs. Belal Muhammad end in a gut-wrenching no contest, a potential title shot vanishing into a bloody, tear-filled eye socket. We watched Daniel Cormier, in his final fight against Stipe Miocic, suffer a torn cornea that arguably cost him the trilogy and a storybook ending to his career. The list goes on forever. It’s an epidemic. A flaw in the system so obvious and so damaging that its continued existence feels like a deliberate choice, a sick running gag that the promotion is in on. And what does the UFC do? They deduct a point. Sometimes. If the referee had a good breakfast and the poke was just egregious enough to warrant more than a five-minute break for the victim to see if his career is over. It’s insane.
And this is where Cejudo’s last-minute crusade, as self-serving as it might be, hits the bullseye. He calls it a debacle, and it is. It’s an ongoing, festering wound on the face of the sport. Because in a world of flying knees, spinning elbows, and brutal submissions, the thing that can most insidiously and permanently end a fighter’s career is the one thing that the organization seems utterly, bafflingly unwilling to seriously address. They’ll create a whole new weight class and invent interim belts out of thin air if it means another pay-per-view buy, but fixing the single most persistent foul? Nah. Too much paperwork, I guess.
Speaking Truth to the Angry, Bald Power
Is calling out Dana White by name a brave move or just screaming into the void?
But that’s the thing about screaming into the void, isn’t it? Sometimes the void screams back, and it usually uses a lot more profanity. Because Dana White is the void. Calling him out is a time-honored tradition in the UFC, usually performed by underpaid fighters or disgruntled former champions. It rarely works. Dana is a man who appears to be fueled by pure, unadulterated rage and Red Rock Casino profits. He doesn’t respond to reasoned arguments; he responds to leverage. And a retiring Henry Cejudo, for all his accolades, has zero leverage. He’s a ghost at the feast. So this call to ‘man up’ will likely be met with the same disdain Dana reserves for media questions about fighter pay. He’ll call Cejudo a complainer, say he’s just trying to get headlines—which he is—and then declare that the UFC has the best eye-poke-prevention system in all of sports. He’ll lie with a straight face and a red head.
Because fixing the problem would require admitting there IS a problem. It would mean acknowledging that the UFC’s signature glove design, with its splayed fingers, is a fundamentally flawed piece of equipment that practically encourages accidental—and not-so-accidental—pokes. It would mean looking back at the old Pride FC gloves, which curved the fingers downward, and admitting that a defunct Japanese promotion from two decades ago had a better idea. And Dana White’s ego would sooner allow him to grow a full head of hair than admit that someone else, especially Pride, did something better. So Cejudo can yell all he wants from his golden soapbox. It’s good theater. It gets us talking. But Dana isn’t listening. He’s too busy counting money and looking for the next contender to feed to the machine.
A New Lamb for the Slaughter
Meanwhile, as the old king complains about the leaky roof, a new kid named Payton Talbott moves into the castle. What does this tell us?
It tells us that the circus never stops, my friends. The show must go on. While Henry Cejudo, the grizzled veteran, is delivering his farewell address about the horrors of war he’s witnessed, here comes Payton Talbott. Undefeated. Full of buzz. Perfect at 9-0. He is the ‘before’ picture, and Cejudo is the ‘after’. Talbott is walking into this meat grinder with two bright, undamaged eyes and a heart full of dreams, completely oblivious to the institutional absurdity that Cejudo is now railing against. He’s the new blood, the fresh meat that keeps the whole gory spectacle running. And this juxtaposition is the entire story of professional fighting in a nutshell. The old lions limp away, warning of the dangers of the savanna, while the new cubs frolic towards the very same dangers, convinced of their own immortality. It’s poetic, in a deeply disturbing way.
Because Talbott is probably not thinking about rule changes or glove design. He’s thinking about knockouts and bonuses and climbing that ladder, the same ladder Cejudo once scaled. He represents the endless supply of talent willing to risk it all, willing to bet their retinas against a shot at glory. And this is why the UFC doesn’t have to change. For every Henry Cejudo who finally gets fed up and speaks out on his way out, there are a hundred Payton Talbotts lined up behind him, ready and willing to sign that contract and take that chance. They are the engine of the machine. Cejudo’s final act isn’t a plea for change; it’s a eulogy. A eulogy for his career, for his health, and for the countless fighters who will follow him into the octagon, hoping they get famous before they go blind. Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need it.
