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Waldo Cortes-Acosta suffered a nasty eye poke at UFC Fight Night 263, and two days removed, he’s still not 100 percent recovered.
Cortes-Acosta (15-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) was illegally eye poked by his opponent Ante Delija (26-7 MMA, 1-1 UFC) in this past Saturday’s heavyweight co-headliner at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, sparking a chaotic scene.
Cortes-Acosta was provided time to recover, and then chose to continue fighting despite impaired vision. The gamble that paid off, becaused seconds later he knocked Delija out.
Although the foul was deemed accidental, Cortes-Acosta said he was greatly affected by the eye poke. So much so, in fact, that he’s still experiencing issues with his eye.
“My body feels perfect, the only thing is my eye,” Cortes-Acosta told Hablemos MMA in Spanish on Monday. “I still feel a lot of discomfort on my eye. Once the acetaminophen wares off, it feels like I have something in my eye and I have to do the process again, and put in the eye drops the doctor game me. But all in all good. I went to the doctor this morning and the doctor told me everything is looking good in terms of recovery. I do have a cut behind my eyelid, my eye is scratched, and on top of the eye I’m having inflammation.”
Cortes-Acosta, 34, says he feels much better a few days removed from the fight, and said the pain he experienced on fight night was “inexplicable.” He said he still sees cloudy when he looks down with his left eye.
“It’s night and day,” Cortes-Acosta said regarding his recovery. “When I was driving back home (after the fight), every 30 minutes, I would feel pressure and a lot of pain. It was like in the fight, when I knocked him out, and I did a big effort, that’s when I felt a pain and I dropped to the ground.”
Cortes-Acosta is expected to see another eye specialist on Thursday to get a more in-depth picture of his situation.
“I just need to rest now, let the days go by,” Cortes-Acosta explained. “I’m going to see another specialist on Thursday to see everything is matching the way it is supposed to, everything is healing correctly, and we take it from there. I’m seeing someone who specializes more internal damage to see how everything is going.”
Cortes-Acosta’s victory over the former PFL tournament winner was one of the more wild and chaotic MMA moments of 2025.
He was eye poked, then ate several big shots before the bout was paused. When it was paused by referee Mark Smith, many, including Delija, thought that Cortes-Acosta had lost by standing TKO. However, upon review of the replay, it was confirmed that Cortes-Acosta was eye poked, so he was given time to recover, and eventually continue.
Since the win, Delija has issued his complaints publicly, claiming that the fight was “illegally” continued. Cortes-Acosta has seen Delija’s comments and disagrees with them.
“Before the fight, in the locker rooms, the referee told us, ‘If I step in and say stop, it’s not that the fight is over. If I say stop and I waive my hands over my head, signaling the end of the fight, then the fight is over,'” Cortes-Acosta said. “The referee when he sees I’m grabbing my eye, he automatically says stops and checks on me, and asks what happened. I said I got poked in the eye, and he said, let’s take a look at the replay.”
