With Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane fighting for the interim heavyweight title on June 14th, the heavyweight division is finally taking a solid step forward. But the most important factor in the division \u2014 Tom Aspinall \u2014 may be taking a step back at the same time.<\/p>\n
After months of bad news<\/a> relating to the condition of his injured eyes, things seemed to be looking up for Aspinall. Video footage from his YouTube vlogs showed the undisputed heavyweight champion slowly starting to train lightly again<\/a> after over half a year off and several surgeries. But the latest update isn\u2019t so great.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just had my recent scan,\u201d Aspinall said on the Fight Your Corner podcast. \u201cI thought it was going to get cleared actually to spar and fight straight away but they actually said they\u2019ve given me another couple of months so I\u2019m just waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n When Aspinall vs. Gane at UFC 321 ended via No Contest due to Ciryl poking Tom in both eyes, UFC CEO Dana White said they\u2019d turn around and re-book the fight as soon as possible.<\/a> That was October 2025, and Aspinall is still in no condition to fight due to the damage generated by those pokes.<\/p>\n The UFC went ahead and booked an interim heavyweight title fight<\/a> between Gane and former middleweight and light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira which will co-main the big White House card<\/a> on June 14th. When asked for his opinion on that fight, Aspinall leaned towards Gane winning.<\/p>\n \u201cAlex Pereira is very good when he fights light heavyweights or middleweights who don\u2019t move a lot,\u201d Aspinall said. \u201cCiryl Gane is a massive heavyweight who moves a lot. Moves really well. So, stylistically, I think it\u2019s a good matchup for Gane.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat being said, Gane doesn\u2019t like leg kicks. He doesn\u2019t fare well against leg kicks. He\u2019s a good kicker, but if someone kicks him, his leg kick defense isn\u2019t great. I struggle to pick a winner at this stage to be honest. I would say Gane by points. I think he\u2019s just going to move too much for him and beat him on points.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep in mind Aspinall\u2019s choice may be influenced by his desire to kick Gane\u2019s ass<\/a> for the months of hell caused by his careless toilet fingers.<\/a> To us, we don\u2019t care if Tommy fights Gane or Pereira next. We\u2019re just hoping Aspinall returns at all in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane fighting for the interim heavyweight title on June 14th, the heavyweight division…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-687284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687284","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=687284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}