{"id":729500,"date":"2026-06-11T11:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T11:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/729500\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T11:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T11:12:09","slug":"ufc-white-house-ciryl-gane-says-tom-aspinalls-cheater-claim-is-his-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/729500\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC White House: Ciryl Gane says Tom Aspinall’s “cheater” claim is his opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ciryl Gane has responded to being called “a big cheater” by Tom Aspinall, saying it is the UFC heavyweight champion’s opinion.<\/p>\n

Gane’s title fight with Aspinall in October was declared a no-contest after what was deemed an accidental eye poke by Gane, which left Aspinall unable to continue in the first round.<\/p>\n

The Briton continued to suffer from double vision, black spots and vertigo, and was diagnosed with a rare condition<\/a> in both eyes, which required surgery in February.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old was poked more than once and although Aspinall initially felt it was accidental, having watched the fight back he said Gane was “cheating, external<\/a> from the first second and the way he wanted to win that fight was to have me compromised by cheating”.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old Frenchman will face Alex Pereira for the interim heavyweight title at UFC Freedom 250<\/a> on Monday and was asked about Aspinall’s comments during the media day.<\/p>\n

“That is his opinion,” Gane said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“You have a beautiful, professional referee. The referee told me nothing because I respect the rules.<\/p>\n

“It’s just an opinion. Everyone’s opinion is OK.”<\/p>\n

Aspinall said last month that he is back in training but is yet to be cleared for contact.<\/p>\n

Once fit, he is expected to face the winner of Monday’s fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ciryl Gane has responded to being called “a big cheater” by Tom Aspinall, saying it is the UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-729500","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\/729500","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=729500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}