Tom Aspinall, a heavyweight competitor for the UFC, has said that the organization prevented him from entering the octagon so that he could compete against Ciryl Gane.
Yesterday evening, Aspinall was present at the UFC Paris event, which featured a fight between former interim heavyweight champion Ciryl Gane and Serghei Spivac. After suffering a defeat by submission to Jon Jones in the first round earlier this year, the Frenchman rebounded with a perfect victory over Spivac by finishing him out in the second round.
After the match was over, Ciryl Gane’s subsequent possible opponent, Tom Aspinall, sought to enter the octagon so that they could have a face-to-face confrontation. However, he was prevented from continuing by the UFC, and Aspinall, speaking about the same topic in an interview with TheMacLife, said the following:
You understand what I mean when I say that I’m not a bully, right? I wanted to go into the cage, but the UFC didn’t want me to go into the cage. If he doesn’t want the fight, I’m not going to attempt to push it on him. Yes, the fight is here if he wants it, but if he doesn’t want it, we’ll have to see what happens. I am quite aware that he would be better off with someone else. I believe that it would be a nice matchup for me in terms of the style, but if he does not want it, I completely understand.”
Tom Aspinall points out why Serghei Spivac’s gameplan against Ciryl Gane backfired
Aspinall pointed out the errors that Serghei Spivac made in his game plan versus Ciryl Gane at UFC Paris during the same interview that he did with TheMacLife. The Brit explained that it was quite possible that Spivac was going to try to take Gane down later on in the fight. However, according to Aspinall, that is not the strategy that he should have adopted in any way.
Tom Aspinall made the following statement while maintaining that the Moldovan should have begun the match with a more grappling-oriented strategy against Gane:
“I believe Sergey’s plan was [since it was] a five-round fight, he was planning on taking him down later in the fight,” you might say. “It was a five-round fight.” But in heavyweight mixed martial arts (MMA), that’s correct, enormous people, little gloves mate. I’m sick of repeating it myself, but it’s right.