UFC Fight Night 80 results: Kevin Casey vs. Antonio Carlos Junior ends in quick no-contest

Antonio Carlos Junior and Kevin Casey

LAS VEGAS – In a strange and unsatisfying turn of events, Kevin Casey’s night ended almost as soon as it began during his bout with Antonio Carlos Junior.

In the fight’s first exchange, Carlos Junior (5-1, 2-1 UFC) pawed his left hand forward as Casey (9-3 MMA, 1-1 UFC) advanced, and his fingers raked Casey’s eye in what seemed right away like a particularly bad eye poke. After Casey admitted that he couldn’t see out of the eye, referee Mark Smith had no choice but to call a stop to the fight just 11 seconds into the first round, resulting in a no-contest.

The middleweight bout was part of the preliminary card of today’s UFC Fight Night 80 event at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It streamed on UFC Fight Pass.

The foul was clearly an unintentional one on the part of Carlos Junior. As fighters so often do, he reached out to maintain his distance against Casey in the fight’s opening exchange, but he left his fingers out and they just happened to find Casey’s eye.

Casey immediately stopped and bent over at the waist, clutching his eye as Smith called for time to assess the severity of the injury. It didn’t take Casey long at all to tell officials that he couldn’t see out of the wounded eye, and from there the no-contest became essentially inevitable.

This ending adds to a series of ultimately disappointing outcomes for Casey, who debuted in the UFC with a TKO loss in 2013, then returned a year later with a submission win that was later overturned when Casey failed a post-fight drug test. He was coming off a decision win over Aldemar Incantara earlier this year, but this unfortunate finish would seem to halt that momentum.

Carlos Junior last competed in June, when he won a submission victory over Eddie Gordon.

Up-to-the-minute UFC Fight Night 80 results include:

• Kevin Casey vs. Antonio Carlos Junior – no-contest (unintentional eye poke) – Round 1, 0:11
• Aljamain Sterling def. Johnny Eduardo via submission (guillotine choke) – Round 2, 4:18
• Santiago Ponzinibbio def. Andreas Stahl via TKO (punches) – Round 1, 4:25
• Danny Roberts def. Nathan Coy via technical submission (triangle choke) – Round 1, 2:46
• Zubaira Tukhugov def. Phillipe Nover via split decision (30-27, 28-29, 30-27)
• Kailin Curran def. Emily Kagan via submission (rear-naked choke) – Round 2, 4:13

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 80, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

(MMAjunkie’s John Morgan and Steven Marrocco contributed to this report on site in Las Vegas.)