Boxing "Eye Poke" Punch?

This is stupid, but because it happened to two of us I wanted to ask if this seemingly unintentional occurrence might be a trained technique in amateur boxing.

We had a visitor at our gym who has competed in national tournaments blah blah blah and is one of those guys who will be a pro someday. He was a small guy in the 152 lbs range. He sparred both myself and another Heavyweight a total of 3 rounds each. In the third round of both myself and the other Heavyweight, we both left the round with what seemed to be an eye injury to our right eye from his orthodox jab (left hand) shooting upwards.

I have never left the ring mid-round before. Although this punch didn't hurt, when he landed this shot on my eye, my depth perception was completely off, my eye felt swollen, and my vision was blurred on the right side instantly. I blinked a few times to shake it off, and when the guy saw this, it looked as if he knew what he had done and then stepped in for a flurry of punches. I realized my vision was off and I would no longer be competitive and I called "time out" :icon_lol:, had my coach look at my eye, and eventually left without finishing the round to go examine my eye in the mirror. The other heavyweight was sitting out and described the exact same thing.

We speculated that the thumb of a glove fits perfectly on the eye if you hold your thumb out, and can fit inside of the head gear if you aim right and hold your thumb out a little.

Is this a "thing" or was this just bad luck?

 

Not sure about boxing, but mma or you punch with your thumb outside of your index finger instead of under and across it, it's considered dirty fighting because you could jam a guys eye with it

 

^ Boxing gloves won't even allow you to wrap the thumb across the knuckles, because of the way they are articulated and the thumb is constructed the thumb lies along side of the fist. At least on any glove I have ever seen.

I used to thumb people in the eye regularly but it was accidental. My thumb joints are pretty jacked up and calcified so they stick out and the gloves I had at the time didn't position them to minimise any protusion. The effect was lots of eye pokes and sore thumbs!

It's possible the guy is using this to his advantage but it could also be that his gloves don't secure his thumb well and he isn't aware of this fact or that it can be corrected by picking your gloves more carefully. It makes his thumb more vulnerable so what you could do is start parrying his strikes hard and aiming for the thumb

 

Haven't tried it but I've often thought about it. If everything goes right I guess it could work, but if you fuck it up somehow I imagine there'd be a chance of hurting your thumb.

 

My left thumb (jab hand) has been hurt a number of times from being out too far, to the point where I would wrap tape around it underneath my hand wrap for some time, it is hard for me to imagine anyone routinely hitting someone in the eye with their thumb but he has been boxing a lot longer than I have so maybe he developed it.