podcast<\/a>. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s a disaster. Tom Aspinall still can\u2019t see. He\u2019s got a f*cked-up right eyeball still. The reality is he might not ever fight again. Like, who knows? If he has surgery on his eye, and it doesn\u2019t go well and he can\u2019t see out of the eye, apparently he\u2019s still f*cked up in his right eye. There\u2019s some tendon damage or something.<\/p>\n\u201cEyes are so tricky, you never know. Unless you\u2019re a f*cking complete psychopath like Michael Bisping, who fought 11 fights in the UFC blind in one eye, which is so crazy that he did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aspinall is no stranger to losing time to injury. In July 2022, he suffered his lone UFC loss when a knee injury brought an end to a bout with Curtis Blaydes in just 15 seconds. The British standout returned a year later, defeating Marcin Tybura by first-round knockout, and then won his next two bouts, including avenging his loss to Blaydes in an interim heavyweight championship defense.<\/p>\n
Following that win, Aspinall was sidelined for another long stretch as he waited for a bout with Jon Jones that never materialized. Combined with the no-contest against Gane and the subsequent fallout, Aspinall\u2019s stock has cooled, though Rogan doesn\u2019t think he should be blamed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope Tom gets back in because again, we don\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on with his eye,\u201d Rogan said. \u201cAnd for all the critics, you need to know this: The right eye, that\u2019s the problem, but if you look at when he fought, his left eye, the finger went deeper in his left eye than it did his right eye. So if you think he\u2019s faking it, he was knuckle-deep in that f*cking left eye. It\u2019s horrible to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, the last thing the UFC heavyweight division needs is its champion to be out of the picture. Long considered one of MMA\u2019s marquee weight classes, it is currently suffering from a dearth of star power at the top and a lack of promising talents in the lower ranks.<\/p>\n
Speaking to top prospect Gable Steveson, Rogan broke down the dire state of the division and why getting Aspinall back in the cage is so important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heavyweight division is so shallow right now,\u201d Rogan said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got Tom Aspinall, Ciryl Gane, Jon Jones if he chooses to fight again, Francis, if by some miracle they can work something out and bring him back to the UFC. Other than that, there\u2019s no one compelling for a championship-caliber fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heavyweight division is, of course, the most prestigious division in the world,\u201d Rogan added. \u201cThe heavyweight champion of the UFC is the baddest motherf*cker on the planet. Right now, it\u2019s kind of a toss-up, right? Because Ciryl Gane had this fight with Aspinall. Jon is kind of semi-retired or whatever he decides to do, it\u2019s kind of up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Rogan is wishing Tom Aspinall the best during a critical time for the UFC heavyweight champion. Aspinall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-383966","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-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383966","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=383966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}