{"id":330584,"date":"2025-12-07T16:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/330584\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T16:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T16:00:07","slug":"tom-aspinall-ufc-president-dana-white-says-he-wasnt-negative-or-derogatory-about-the-briton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/330584\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall: UFC president Dana White says he wasn’t “negative” or “derogatory” about the Briton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dana White insists he never said anything “negative” or “derogatory” about Tom Aspinall after the Briton suffered an eye injury during his fight with Ciryl Gane last month.<\/p>\n

Aspinall retained his heavyweight title when the bout was deemed a no contest following an eye poke from the Frenchman – an incident which has left him with “persistent” double vision.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the post-fight news conference, UFC president White said “only Tom knows what happened” and that he “didn’t want to continue”.<\/p>\n

Aspinall, who said he couldn’t see following the eye poke, said he was “disappointed” by White’s reaction on his YouTube channel., external<\/a><\/p>\n

When White was asked about Aspinall’s comments following UFC 323 in Las Vegas on Saturday, <\/a>White said “things can be taken out of context”.<\/p>\n

“I know Tom said I haven’t even talked to him and all this stuff but we have people all over him right now checking up on him and making sure he’s good,” said White.<\/p>\n

“I’m not a doctor – I’m just saying what I heard. I said Tom’s eyes are good, he’s going to take some time, heal, that’s all I said.<\/p>\n

“Never once did I say anything negative about him in a derogatory way. I’m sure he’s upset, fired up and he’ll get better and we’ll get him back there.”<\/p>\n

After Aspinall’s bout with Gane, White said he was keen to book a rematch but it is unclear when Aspinall will be fit to return.<\/p>\n

Aspinall has still not returned to training and has said he may require surgery on his eyes.<\/p>\n

Earlier in November, veteran MMA referee Herb Dean said officials will look to more regularly enforce point deductions for eye pokes after the Aspinall incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dana White insists he never said anything “negative” or “derogatory” about Tom Aspinall after the Briton suffered an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-330584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330584","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=330584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}