Spinning Back Clique: Illegal knees and eye pokes and more knees, oh my!

Check out the latest edition of “Spinning Back Clique,” in which our panel weighs in on illegal knees, eye pokes and more.

Welcome to “Spinning Back Clique,” MMA Junkie’s weekly show that takes a quick spin through the biggest topics in mixed martial arts. This week, host Simon Head is joined by panelists “Gorgeous” George Garcia of MMA Junkie Radio, as well as MMA Junkie’s Farah Hannoun and Nolan King. Let’s get into it!

• The highly anticipated welterweight fight between Leon Edwards and Belal Muhammad ended in disappointment at UFC Fight Night 187 thanks to an accidental eye poke that took Muhammad out of the fight early in the second round. So what can the sport do about eye pokes, which have been a fairly consistent problem?
• After the main event, Edwards was clear about what he wants next – and that’s a title shot, even though he didn’t beat Muhammad, and even though the fight was his first in more than 600 days. Muhammad thinks he’s crazy for thinking he deserves a shot at Kamaru Usman rather than a rematch of their fight. So what do we think should happen?
• The eye poke wasn’t the only thing that stopped a fight early at UFC Fight Night 187. For the second straight week, a bout was stopped due to an illegal knee to the head of a grounded opponent. In the UFC 259 title fight between bantamweight champion Petr Yan and challenger Aljamain Sterling, Sterling won the belt when Yan was disqualified for an illegal knee. But at UFC Fight Night 187, Eryk Anders simply had to endure a no contest when he hit Darren Stewart with one. Does the sport need to have a big reckoning with the rules and officiating so the end results will be a little more clear cut when things like that happen?
• Tony Ferguson and Beneil Dariush are set to fight at UFC 262, and we’ve also got the potential for a Dustin Poirier vs. Conor McGregor trilogy fight. The UFC’s lightweight division is a killer one, and with champion Khabib Nurmagomedov retired, but not officially retired, what kind of matchups do we want to see to get some kind of pecking order at the top of the weight class?

Hope you enjoy this week’s show. Watch Episode 71 of “Spinning Back Clique” above.