Austen Lane’s debut results in tragic 29-second no contest after eye poking Justin Tafa at UFC on ABC 5

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us today, June 24, 2023, for UFC on ABC 5, going down live from the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.

Headlining the event is an epic clash of featherweight contenders where no. 5 ranked Josh Emmett (18-3) collides with no. 9 ranked Ilia Topuria (13-0) in the main event of the evening.

Co-headlining is a flyweight encounter between another pair of contenders in no. 9 ranked Amanda Ribas (12-3) and no. 11 ranked Maycee Barber (12-2).

Our feature fight of the evening came between a pair of knockout artists in former XFC heavyweight champion Justin Tafa (6-3) and former FFC heavyweight champion Austen Lane (12-3).

Of their combined 18 wins, all 18 came via finish with 17 knockouts.

Continue reading to see how this heavyweight encounter went down:

Official Result: Justin Tafa vs Austen Lane results in a no contest (eye poke) at :29 of round one

Lane lands a couple solid round kicks to the body once the bout begins, and Tafa comes very close to landing one of his bombs on a couple occasions. However, early on in round one, Lane accidently pokes Tafa in the eye, forcing it to swell up and bleed.

As a result, Tafa was unable to continue and the bout unfortunately went down as a no contest.

One of the most brutal eye poke in the UFC ends the fight between Austen Lane and Justin Tafa 😢#UFCJacksonville

https://t.co/lnGzKnni1N

— COMBAT SPORTS TODAY (@CSTodayNews) June 24, 2023

Austen Lane lost to Greg Hardy on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018. Hardy went on to have a controversial UFC debut himself, losing via disqualification in round two. Now five years later Lane makes his UFC debut and it results in a no contest less than a minute into the fight.

Lane came into this bout on a six-fight win streak, and Tafa KO’d his last two opponents in a combined 2:59.

There was a lot of anticipation for this one, one of them was certainly to get knocked out, but unfortunately, that’s not how it went and we got no winner.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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