{"id":15611,"date":"2025-07-23T09:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/15611\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:19:08","slug":"tom-aspinall-briton-to-defend-heavyweight-title-against-ciryl-gane-at-ufc-321","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/15611\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall: Briton to defend heavyweight title against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After eight months in limbo since Jones defended his title against Miocic, Aspinall can finally move on with his career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At 32, Aspinall could feel he is in his prime &#8211; which is why he has promised to be an active champion, fighting any challenger anywhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His first opponent is Gane \u2013 someone Aspinall wanted to fight in 2023, but the contest did not come to fruition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In many ways, Gane has received similar compliments to Aspinall throughout his UFC career, with the pair being complimented for the speed they showcase at heavyweight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gane is primarily a striker who controls distance with excellent footwork, but he does lack the explosive knockout power of Aspinall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gane&#8217;s two UFC defeats have also exposed holes in his grappling, with Ngannou controlling him on the ground in 2022 and Jones submitting him in ruthless fashion in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Because Aspinall stops his opponents so quickly &#8211; he has seven first-round finishes in the UFC &#8211; parts of his skillset still remain unknown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However victories over Volkov in 2022 and Andrei Arlovski the previous year show how dangerous the Briton can be on the ground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Aspinall will head into the bout as favourite but Gane will have a point to prove after coming up short twice before when fighting for undisputed gold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After eight months in limbo since Jones defended his title against Miocic, Aspinall can finally move on with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-15611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}