{"id":240080,"date":"2025-10-25T22:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/240080\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T22:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T22:15:07","slug":"ufc-321-aspinalls-career-going-sideways-as-clock-ticks-on-fighting-prime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/240080\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 321: Aspinall\u2019s career going sideways as clock ticks on fighting prime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Aspinall\u2019s first undisputed UFC heavyweight title defense ended with a whimper instead of a bang.<\/p>\n

The UFC 321<\/a> main event between Aspinall and Ciryl Gane in Abu Dhabi was shaping up to be an intriguing battle, but ended in the dying seconds of the first round after Gane sank his fingers into Aspinall\u2019s eyeballs<\/a> like he was trying to palm a basketball. Aspinall attempted to recover but couldn\u2019t, and the bout was ruled a No Contest.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest strange moment in Aspinall\u2019s career, and we\u2019re starting to wonder whether the British heavyweight is cursed. When things go right, they go very right: Aspinall has blasted through most of his UFC competition in under a round. But when they go wrong, boy do they go wrong.<\/p>\n

There was the knee injury<\/a> that cost him his fight against Curtis Blaydes in 2022 and kept him sidelined for a year. Then there was the year and a half he spent as interim champion, waiting and waiting for Jon Jones<\/a> to fight him. That never panned out, and Aspinall spent even more time on the sidelines just twiddling his thumbs.<\/p>\n

When Jones finally relinquished the title rather than face Aspinall in June, the UFC treated it like an afterthought.<\/a> No big announcement. No hype at all. Just Dana White randomly telling the press at a UFC Azerbaijan post-fight press conference while Hunter Campbell rushed to give Aspinall a courtesy call on the situation.<\/p>\n

Now we have this latest bump in the road. What was supposed to be Aspinall\u2019s big coming out party as the undisputed champion has ended in disappointment. He certainly can\u2019t be blamed: Gane didn\u2019t just \u2018poke\u2019 Aspinall, he jammed his fingers deep into both Tom\u2019s eyeballs. But the result is the same: more frustration and disappointment, and no forward momentum or starpower gained.<\/p>\n

While the heavyweight division is in shambles, at least we had Tom Aspinall as champ. But between all the top stars avoiding Aspinall and strange bounces like this happening, we have to wonder whether he\u2019s the guy who can make us forget about the division\u2019s trouble, or will his potential greatness be overshadowed by one bad break after another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall\u2019s first undisputed UFC heavyweight title defense ended with a whimper instead of a bang. The UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[109793,49,48,641,638,109794,82,109474],"class_list":{"0":"post-240080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-aspinall-vs-gane-start-time","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-preview-and-live-results","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc-321-fight-card"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}