{"id":421658,"date":"2026-01-20T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/421658\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:32:08","slug":"tom-aspinalls-teammate-defends-him-following-fan-backlash-over-eye-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/421658\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Aspinall’s teammate defends him following fan backlash over eye injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC prospect Modestas Bukauskas has defended Tom Aspinall following the backlash he received after his UFC 321 injury.<\/p>\n

Back at UFC 321, Tom Aspinall suffered a nasty double eye poke at the hands of Ciryl Gane. The Englishman was unable to continue in the contest and in the aftermath, it quickly became clear that he would have to undergo surgery on both eyes in order to try and fix the issue, and hopefully, return to the cage one day.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Tom Aspinall detractors blasted by prominent MMA heavyweight champion post-UFC 321<\/a><\/p>\n

For whatever reason, a lot of fighters, fans and pundits opted to go after<\/a> Aspinall for what went down as opposed to Gane. Many suggested that Tom simply didn\u2019t want to continue with the fight which, of course, Tom rejected, noting that he literally couldn\u2019t see anything after his loss.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, Aspinall\u2019s training partner Modestas Bukauskas weighed in on the situation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Bukauskas defends Aspinall<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see that stuff online, I just felt so bad for Tom,\u201d Bukauskas told MMA Fighting. \u201cHe\u2019s been a consummate company man. He took a fight on what two weeks\u2019 notice against [Sergei] Pavlovich. He\u2019s been waiting on the sidelines for [Jon] Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been doing everything for this company and he\u2019s put on some amazing performances. He\u2019s been finishing people within the first round. It\u2019s like people are quick to forget all the things he\u2019s done and because he got eye poked, it\u2019s like have any of you been poked like that in the eye?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been poked in the eye pretty bad as well and my vision was blurry for ages. I\u2019m talking it was a whole year one time. I kept on getting poked constantly in the eye and especially with that one, like everyone was saying, it was pretty much knuckle deep in the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s very unfair of people to jump to hate on him because he couldn\u2019t continue. What if that happened to you? I don\u2019t think you\u2019d be fighting either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quotes via MMA Fighting<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC prospect Modestas Bukauskas has defended Tom Aspinall following the backlash he received after his UFC 321 injury.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-421658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421658","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=421658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}