{"id":455576,"date":"2026-02-03T11:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T11:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455576\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T11:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T11:19:10","slug":"ufc-tom-aspinall-backed-by-modestas-bukauskas-to-return-as-most-dangerous-hes-ever-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455576\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC: Tom Aspinall backed by Modestas Bukauskas to return as ‘most dangerous’ he’s ever been"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall will return from his eye injury the “most dangerous” fighter he has ever been, training partner Modestas Bukauskas believes.<\/p>\n

Aspinall said earlier this month he was set to have surgery after sustaining a “nightmare” injury following an accidental eye poke from Ciryl Gane in October. <\/p>\n

The eye poke, which caused Aspinall’s first undisputed title defence to end in a no-contest, left the 32-year-old with “persistent” double vision.<\/a><\/p>\n

Some pundits, such as UFC commentator Joe Rogan, have questioned whether Aspinall will ever compete again after the injury, but training partner Bukauskus has no doubts.<\/p>\n

“When he comes back expect to see the most dangerous Tom Aspinall you’ve ever seen,” Bukauskus told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“He’s an incredible athlete, an incredible person and this is only going to make him that much sharper and better. Heavyweight division, watch out.”<\/p>\n

Lithuanian-Briton Bukauskas lost against Nikita Krylov at UFC 324 last week and could not train with Aspinall in preparation for the fight because of the eye injury.<\/p>\n

“Tom’s dealing with that really horrible eye injury. I feel really bad for him because he’s looking at potentially getting surgery and his eyes still aren’t 100%,” Bukauskus added.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been keeping tabs, sending messages here and there to [check] how he’s doing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall will return from his eye injury the “most dangerous” fighter he has ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-455576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455576","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=455576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}