Charles Jourdain’s undefeated run at bantamweight was ended Saturday night at UFC 331 when Marlon “Chito” Vera won by third-round TKO over the Quebecois fighter.
Jourdain started off strong, but “Chito” turned up the heat as the fight progressed. By the third round, he had knocked down “Air” several times, and in the final moments of the fight, Jourdain fell to his back and waved the fight off. (highlights here).
It was an unusual way the fight ended and many wondered what happened to Jourdain to call his fight that way. Shortly after the event, Charles shared the scary reason.
“I lost my sight in the third period,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “I spread the fight because I don’t need to get hit in the head anymore. I lost. I failed.”
That’s certainly cause for concern, though Jourdain didn’t one of the two combatants from UFC 331 who were transported to the hospital after the event.
Jourdain has a history of eye problems and was in a fight in June 2025 With Ricky Simon canceled after developing an eye problem during pre-fight medicine.
“I didn’t even know my eyes were wrong,” Jourdain recalled during the UFC 331 press event. “I just did my classic eye exam before the fight … and the guy says, ‘No, your eye is exhausted.’ You can’t fight that eye. You can lose it.” What are you talking about, I can see properly, I can’t see anything. He says, “No, I can’t let you fight.”
“So we did the surgery a few weeks later … and I can’t see any better or any worse, it’s just that I had something in my retina, they put a laser in my eye, a very uncomfortable situation and I thought I could see better. Nothing changed.”
Hopefully the sudden blindness in the eye during the fight is not part of the same problem, otherwise Jourdain could face similar problems to former heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall. passes.
Jourdain is 9-8 in the UFC, but was on an impressive three-fight winning streak since making the weigh-in in November 2024. Two of those three fights ended in submissions, and all three earned him performance bonuses. As one of the few exciting Canadian fighters to rise through the ranks, it would be awful to see his rise come to a halt after this loss.