{"id":59725,"date":"2025-08-11T10:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T10:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/59725\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T10:20:07","slug":"tom-aspinalls-father-reveals-what-he-thought-before-the-nasty-ufc-fight-ending-knee-injury-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/59725\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall\u2019s father reveals what he thought before the nasty UFC fight ending knee injury in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Aspinall\u2019s unexpected knee injury kept him out for over a year.<\/p>\n

Before becoming the UFC<\/a> champion, after Jon Jones<\/a> retired and vacated the title belt, Aspinall<\/a> suffered a nasty ACL injury during the first round of his fight with Curtis Blaydes in London.<\/p>\n

The injury would not see him return to action until July of the next year, when he knocked out Marcin Tybura in the opening round to bounce back on his trail to the heavyweight title.<\/p>\n

\"TomPhoto by Jeff Bottari\/Zuffa LLC<\/p>\n

Now he has already avenged the fight with Blaydes in quick fashion and will be defending his newly anointed heavyweight crown in Abu Dhabi against Ciryl Gane.<\/p>\n

Tom Aspinall\u2019s father speaks on the warm-up before the 2022 knee injury<\/p>\n

While the fighter himself did not seem to have an inkling about any problems with his leg prior to his 2022 clash, his father had noticed something in the warm-up.<\/p>\n

Andy Aspinall, who is the full-time trainer of his son, spoke in a video to the MMA star\u2019s YouTube channel about what he\u2019d seen before the British fighter stepped into the Octagon.<\/p>\n

In the clip, he said: \u201cHe kind of ran out. So I thought, is there something a bit different? Whether his knee was bothered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fighters say I feel great. You don\u2019t know if they really do feel great. The weaker the fight, you don\u2019t know if they are masking a bit of an injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can only say what\u2019s conveyed to me from him, and he always seemed the same. But in the warm-up, that didn\u2019t seem right. Just everything seemed a little bit off, but it proved to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

The damage to the leg was so severe that the 32-year-old was not able to walk properly and admitted in the build-up to his return fight that he had some dark days.<\/p>\n

Tom Aspinall\u2019s sparring partner reveals what it\u2019s like to train with the UFC heavyweight champion<\/p>\n

As he was taken by surprise by the retirement of Jones coming sooner than expected<\/a>, the fight against the Frenchman was not his preferred option.<\/p>\n

But he is preparing to put on a performance befitting of a champion, with a promise to make the division active again.<\/p>\n

Leigh\u2019s own has now begun training camp for his matchup with Gane in October and is already looking good on the pads and the mat.<\/p>\n

His training partner, Modestas Bukauskas, gave some insight into what it was like being around the champion in camp.<\/p>\n

Bukauskas said: \u201cI literally get so inspired by him daily just by the way that he conducts himself on the mats, outside the mats, and I\u2019m trying to take a load of pages out of his book in terms of how to approach my life and my career.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if we\u2019re talking about in the training room, he\u2019s an absolute savage. The speed, the athleticism, the timing, it\u2019s just on a whole other level. I don\u2019t see any other heavyweight move like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, he\u2019s going to be reigning and defending his heavyweight world championship for many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Honey Badger\u2019 has not fought since defeating Blaydes in the rematch last year.<\/p>\n

However, with a new fight pencilled in and a new year on the horizon, the Northerner is ready to become one of the best champions in the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall\u2019s unexpected knee injury kept him out for over a year. Before becoming the UFC champion, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,799,787],"class_list":["post-59725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-tom-aspinall","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59725","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=59725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}