UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall has opened up about the painful aftermath of his no-contest with Ciryl Gane at UFC 321, revealing he required three separate eye surgeries following the bout.
Aspinall has not competed since the October clash, which ended due to multiple eye pokes from Gane. He detailed the procedures, explaining that he underwent one surgery on his left eye and two on his right.
“I’ve had three [eye] surgeries,” Aspinall said on Great Company With Jamie Lang. “I had one on the left and two on the right. By the way, I’ve had the snip, right? I’ve had a vasectomy, and I was thinking that has got to be the worst surgery ever. Mate, compared to eye surgery, it is nothing. Honestly.”
“It’s f*cking horrendous,” he added, describing how he was kept awake while doctors worked on his eyes. “So they kept me awake. I lay awake, they put something on to keep your eyeball open… and obviously, they numb it and stuff. They numb your eye. They did drops and then an injection on the side. Mate, they’re coming at you with like a scalpel or knife, or whatever it’s called and you’re just watching them slice your eyeball open. It was horrendous.”
Aspinall also addressed backlash from some fans who accused him of taking an easy way out of the Gane fight. “I still get comments like, ‘Oh he f*cking ducked out of the fight, he didn’t want to be there’ and stuff like that,” he said, pushing back on criticism of his toughness.
