Rafael Fiziev: 'My left eye was shut off in the first round, I had to punch blind in the second'

“In the first round my left eye was shut off, in the second I had to fight blind.”

As 1news.az correspondent reports, Azerbaijani fighter Rafael Fiziev, who became the winner of the UFC Fight Night tournament bout held at the National Gymnastics Arena in Baku, said this while answering journalists’ questions.

As R. Fiziev admitted, in the final seconds of the first round he completely lost vision on one side due to an accurate strike from his opponent.
“I couldn’t see anything after the first round ended! He hit me with the last jab, in the last second, right in the left eye. And when I opened both eyes, everything was completely doubled and even quadrupled. Even now my vision is still a little blurry,” the fighter said.
The athlete noted that during the break he unsuccessfully tried to fix the situation together with his team:
“I went and sat on the stool in the corner and realized that I couldn’t see anything at all. That is, I closed my left eye — I could see, I opened it — and nothing. I asked my cornermen to wipe it because I thought blood or sweat had gotten in there. They wiped it, but nothing changed. And then I started thinking: ‘How am I going to fight in this condition? I won’t be able to keep my left eye closed for all five rounds.’”
According to Rafael Fiziev, before the start of the second five-minute round he decided to take a justified risk and rely on his intuition.
“Before the second round I thought: ‘I don’t need to see everything perfectly. I’ll just throw this punch.’
Doubts were spinning in my head: ‘Do it or not? Should I or shouldn’t I?’
In the end I came out, decided there was no point in looking for anything, and just threw the strike. It was like a lucky punch, and it landed perfectly,” R. Fiziev shared.