Tom Aspinall has finally had enough. The heavyweight champion is still dealing with the brutal injuries he suffered at UFC 321, where Ciryl Gane poked him in both eyes during their Abu Dhabi showdown. Since then, Aspinall hasn’t trained, hasn’t recovered his full vision, and hasn’t held back from calling out Gane’s behavior.
The fight was ruled a no-contest, but Aspinall walked away convinced Gane fought dirty, and he’s ready to come back as a completely different man.
For years, fans have criticised Aspinall for being too polite in the buildup to fights. Despite being one of the most electric heavyweights in recent UFC history, the “nice guy” persona never quite pushed his star power forward.
However, after the chaos with Gane and the friction with Dana White afterwards, Aspinall says he’s done playing the humble role.
“When I come back there is no more ‘Mr Nice Guy’,” Aspinall said in a video addressing his injury. “Nice Tom, when it comes to MMA, is gone. I’m going full bad guy I think.”
Even with a serious injury, Aspinall faced backlash from a section of MMA fans. Some questioned whether he was really hurt. So he shut that down with receipts, posting his official medical notes on Instagram.
The report confirmed he suffered “significant bilateral ocular trauma,” double vision, orbital soft tissue damage, and a minimally displaced fracture of his right medial orbital wall. In simple terms: both eyes were messed up badly.Aspinall’s frustration hasn’t eased.
At UFC 321, he stepped in for his first undisputed title defense and the event immediately turned into a disaster. Gane’s illegal eye poke in the first round left him unable to see, ending the fight instantly. Fans criticized him for not continuing, and even Dana White called the whole situation “a pain in the ass.”Aspinall didn’t hold back when responding.
“I’ve been having a lovely time, in and out of the hospital, having all kinds of different tests done to my eyes, speaking to specialists, speaking to surgeons, speaking to doctors,” Aspinall said on his YouTube channel. Oh, it’s been a fantastic time.”
White’s comments pushed him to explain why he refused to keep fighting.
“I didn’t continue, and I’ll tell you why I didn’t continue: because I’m not a f*cking dummy,” Aspinall said. “I’m not going to go out there and fight one of the best strikers in the world if I can’t see.”
“Go back and watch my fight with Arlovski. At the end of the first round, he punched me right in the eyeball. For the rest of the fight, I couldn’t see him out of that eye. That’s fine. If you get punched or kicked in the eye, that’s fine. If you get double eye poked in both eyes and you’ve got no vision because of a foul, why should I carry on?”
Aspinall also fired back at fans claiming he quit because Gane was winning.
“I felt like the fight was going OK,” Aspinall said. “I knew it was going to be a long and tough fight.”
However, the person he’s most furious with is still Gane. After rewatching the footage, he decided the eye poke wasn’t an accident.
“The guy was trying to f*cking poke my eyes out, all the way through that round,” Aspinall said. “Multiple exchanges… nearly every exchange that I could put him in danger, he had his fingers out, pointing toward my eyes. The guy was cheating from the first second.”
And right now, the consequences are real. Aspinall still can’t train due to lingering double vision. No timeline exists for a return or the inevitable rematch.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Whenever the eye’s good to go, that’s when I’ll do it.”
One thing, however, is crystal clear: whenever Aspinall makes it back, he’s not coming as the polite, soft-spoken champion. He’s coming back mean.
