Tom Aspinall has incapacitated some of the scariest heavyweights of his generation, yet his toughest fight endures. You might argue it has lasted four years now, and that it has reached the championship rounds. In dragging on that long, it has ironically cost him his own championship.
On Monday morning, Aspinall relinquished the UFC heavyweight title. The bombshell statement came 11 months after he last fought, when his first defence of the undisputed belt ended in a first-round no-contest, after Ciryl Gane plunged his finger knuckle-deep in the Briton’s eye socket. That was one of several eye pokes on that night in Abu Dhabi, and the accumulative effect left Aspinall unable to carry on, and in need of surgery. Multiple surgeries.
