KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Looking like he went 12 rounds in a boxing match, instead of another tough race in the Chase for the NASCAR Cup Series championship, Ryan Blaney appeared Friday in the Kansas Speedway media center with a black eye.

"I wonder what you guys are going to ask me about," Blaney retorted with a smile after the moderator fielded the first question of the press conference Friday. "I wish it healed quicker than this (chuckles, bashfully) but it didn't."

Blaney sustained a black eye after Carson Hocevar punched him in the face following Saturday night's Bass Pro Shops Bristol Night Race. Hocevar's No. 77 Zeigler Chevrolet bumped into Blaney's No. 12 Wabash Ford on the track, causing Blaney to hit the wall and fall out of the race with 43 laps to go.

The Penske driver promised something was going to happen after the race. He delivered, walking up to Hocevar and grabbing him by the collar.

"It's definitely unlike me," Blaney said. "I get fired up quickly and I calm down quickly but it built up over the half hour.... It's just a combination of the last month."

Blaney pointed out his team had issues getting through tech inspection before the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Then, he ran well at World Wide Technology Raceway Gateway before a blown brake rotor caused him to finish 35th.

That led to Blaney starting 29th at Bristol based on the metric. He worked his way through the field, led 202 laps and then had the incident with Hocevar.

On pit road, Blaney stood up for himself – yet still got hit twice by Hocevar before getting pulled away. Even though he shuffled through the crowd and broke through to getting a punch in, Hocevar shined and Blaney got the shiner. 

Blaney admitted on Denny Hamlin's podcast, "I got my --- kicked." However, he drew praise from drivers, like friend Bubba Wallace, who commended him for standing up to Hocevar. 

NASCAR CEO Steve O'Donnell also, in a way, praised Blaney and Hocevar for showing their personality and passion. While appearing on Kevin Harvick's podcast, he said neither driver would get a penalty for the incident but made it clear: NASCAR won't encourage fighting.

“I think they made the correct choice not to do anything. It would be one thing, I would fully understand, of getting slapped with a penalty if I went over and initiated a punch or something like that, but in that situation I kind of initiated a confrontation and Carson defended himself and I’m happy they didn’t do anything. They just kind of let it simmer, so I think it’s the right call in that situation," Blaney said.

Ryan Blaney is sixth in points, 52 behind leader Kyle Larson, while Carson Hocevar is eighth in points, 85 behind. 

Inevitably, as rivals often do and Hocevar had at Gateway with another rival, they will race each other – likely this weekend at Kansas. How does that work after everything at Bristol?

“I don’t know yet. These things happen. The thing on track happens really, really fast and you making decisions in a split-second of a moment and sometimes you can be skewed or not skewed of what you think happened or what actually happened, and then reflecting on it for a day," Blaney said. "He and I really haven’t had a problem in a year or a year-and-a-half or nothing like that. I feel like we’ve raced each other pretty good, so I don’t think there will be really anything different than racing hard in tough moments per usual."

The bigger challenge will be the stretch of races on a track type Blaney and Penske have struggled at – while Kyle Larson and the Toyota drivers have shined. Kansas is this weekend, then there's Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"I think we’ve done a lot of work and I think we’ve gotten better but only time will tell when we get on the racetrack, hopefully tomorrow. I don’t want to start in the back again if qualifying gets rained out but I’m really curious how these next three weeks are gonna go. It’s gonna be a big three weeks on did we make improvements at these mile-and-a-halves? Can we stay in touch with the Toyotas and a couple of the Chevys that have been fast?" Blaney mulled. "I don’t really have a number in mind, it’s just going and trying to get stage points, trying to finish top five, racking up high forties to low fifty point days."

Blaney has a magical trio of great racetracks for him after that – Phoenix Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway – but it won't mean anything if he is too far out.