Gillian Robertson says she felt ‘pretty obvious’ two eye sockets from Priscila Cachoeira at UFC 269

Gillian Robertson has received some of the most blatant eye holes in recent memory, but ‘The Savage’ carried them through and had no problem with Priscila Cachoeira for her serious defensive tactics.

The Robertson vs Cachoeira bout served as the opening goal for the UFC 269 initial qualifiers this past Saturday. Although Cachoeira had better impressive trades, Robertson continued the fight once she was able to take it down. From there, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt knocked her opponent down with a continuous swing before she sank in a suffocation in the back with just seconds left in the first round.

As she was squeezing, Cachoeira tried to fend off the choke by repeatedly putting her thumb in Robertson’s eyes, who remained undaunted and focused on getting there. She finally did at the last second, and left the Octagon with an impressive victory.

Robertson spoke to the media gathering during her post-fight press conference and explained what she was thinking in the eyedrops from Cachoeira.

“I definitely just hope that the referee stops the fight at that point,” said Robertson.video provided by MMA Fighting). “Like, I don’t even think he gave her a warning because there are two pretty obvious things that make me feel kind of like thumbs up straight into my eyes. But I’m just trying to squeeze, squeeze. Before the first time, I actually felt her body soften a bit, so I thought she was out, and then I felt my thumb go straight to my eyes. I said, ‘Oh, she’s not out! YES!'”

The eye socket wasn’t the only mistake Robertson faced. Cachoeira also lost 3 pounds during Friday morning’s weigh-in, which forced the originally scheduled flyweight match to be contested in catch-up weight instead.

Despite his lack of professionalism, Robertson had no malice towards Cachoeira.

“For me, I just let it slide. I don’t know, it’s a war. Sometimes, I guess you don’t really know what’s going on in her head. I do not know. She was probably in a desperate moment, really defenseless, so the main defense was having her eyes gouged out. So I don’t necessarily have any hard feelings for her about that or professionally. Like I said, ignoring the weight isn’t a great thing, but apart from that, it is what it is. We fought hard and we can hold grudges at the end of the day.”

Not only did Robertson hit a two-loss streak and return to the winning column, but she broke the record with a win over Cachoeira. Robertson overtook Mackenzie Dern for the most wins (5) by a female fighter in UFC history and the most wins (6) in the women’s flyweight division from current champion Valentina Shevchenko.

“I didn’t even think about it until now, so that’s amazing,” said Robertson. “I know that Mackenzie Dern took that record from me a few months ago, so it’s great to be on top and I hope that I can push that record to the point where nobody can catch me.”