It’s hard not to feel for Tom Aspinall. The man simply can’t catch a break. This morning he vacated his UFC title as a courtesy to the rest of the heavyweight division, explaining in a post on social media that his eyes aren’t fully healed from being gouged by Ciryl Gane last October at UFC 321.
You might remember that Aspinall had to wait 15 months just to get that fight with Gane, as he was subjected to the whims and whimsies of Jon Jones, the previous titleholder who only coughed up the belt after a yearlong deliberation.
That means that in the prime years of his career, Aspinall, now 33, has fought just once in 26 months. Right now he’s unable to see his return, so he vacated.
Which brings us to the status of the UFC’s heavyweight division …
Heavyweight right now is a trip. And when I say that I mean it’s been a peyote trip, in which new faces keep leaping out of the fire, and any footholds on reality are tenuous at best. At first it was the ancestors we were seeing — Stipe Miocic, Francis Ngannou and eventually Jon Jones. Then Jones shapeshifted into Aspinall before our eyes, before morphing into the recurring face of Gane, a past trauma that won’t go away. It gets trippier when Alex Pereira pops up from the bushes, firing arrows at Gane.
But seriously, look at this ludicrous timeline of events in the heavyweight division over the past five years. It’s like an infinity picture that just keeps zooming out forever.
March 27, 2021 – UFC 260: Francis Ngannou wins the lineal UFC heavyweight title by beating Stipe Miocic in a rematch. In many ways, this felt like a coronation for Ngannou, who’d seemed destined to one day win the belt since beginning his career 6-0 in the UFC, with six finishes. The first signs of trouble occurred when the UFC asked Ngannou to defend his title at UFC 265 against Derrick Lewis just four and a half months later, a turnaround that was too quick for Ngannou’s tastes. He asked for a little more time, which rubbed the UFC the wrong way.
So, the UFC came up with a Plan B, booking Lewis into an interim title fight with Ciryl Gane at UFC 265.
Aug. 7, 2022 – UFC 265: Gane beats Lewis via third-round TKO in Lewis’ hometown of Houston to become the division’s lesser champion, and to set up a heavyweight unification bout with Ngannou.
Jan. 22, 2022 – UFC 270: Ngannou needs all five rounds to unify the heavyweight titles, but he beats Gane going away. The fact that he used wrestling to get it done was the story, after suffering a knee injury in the early going. We eventually come to find out, UFC CEO Dana White was actively rooting against Ngannou. This is the last time things will ever be normal in this division again.
Jan. 14, 2023: After failing to come to terms on a new contract, the UFC strips Ngannou of his heavyweight belt and waives its one-year matching rights clause, which enables Ngannou to sign with the PFL and to pursue boxing. Ngannou, MMA’s lineal heavyweight champion, gives Tyson Fury a scare in his boxing debut, which is a wild development in the broader world of combat sports.
Yet for UFC fans, the bottom line is that the lineal heavyweight champion is gone.
March 4, 2023 – UFC 285: With Ngannou skedaddling, Jon Jones — who after many years of flirting with a move to heavyweight — finally makes the leap, taking on former interim heavyweight champion Gane for the vacant title. Jones needs only two minutes and change to put away Gane with a guillotine choke and to win a title in a second weight class.
Still, because Jones didn’t beat Ngannou, there are asterisks being flung around like so many ninja stars.
Nov. 11, 2023 – UFC 295: Jones was supposed to face former champion Miocic at Madison Square Garden, yet a torn pectoral muscle forces him out of action. Miocic isn’t interested in fighting a replacement, so that means another interim title fight, this time between Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich. Aspinall beats Pavlovich in 69 seconds by knockout, making him the undisputed interim heavyweight champion to the non-lineal champ, Jones.
No one, especially not Tom Aspinall, could’ve foreseen how things would go from here.
July 27, 2024 – UFC 304: With Dana White staunchly defending Jones as not only MMA’s GOAT, but as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world at every press junket he finds himself in, the UFC preserves the Jones-Miocic fight against hurricane-force blowback from fans and media. To keep things moving at heavyweight, Aspinall defends the interim title against Curtin Blaydes, which is a ludicrous thing to type. Interims are meant to be temporary!
In any case, he avenges his only loss in the UFC by knocking Blaydes out in 60 seconds.
Still, there are asterisks being juggled like tennis balls because Blaydes wasn’t Jones (who hadn’t beat Ngannou).
Nov. 16, 2024 – UFC 309: The stubborn heavyweight title fight between Jones and 42-year-old Miocic takes place at Madison Square Garden, a full year beyond its expiry, and Jones beats the shell of Miocic via third-round TKO. Jones retains the heavyweight title, paving the way for a unification bout with the now long-tenured interim titleholder, Aspinall.
The next six or eight months (or whatever): Jones iterates and reiterates that he has no interest in fighting Aspinall, as it does nothing for his legacy. Aspinall waits while Jones hits ports in Vietnam and Thailand, riding around on little motorbikes, saying things like, “living my best life.” The UFC sticks by Jones as long as it can.
June 2025: As Aspinall watches the pages of his calendar flip through the seasons’ many breezes, Jones finally vacates the title and announces his retirement from MMA. A couple of weeks later, when he catches wind that the UFC is planning an event on the White House lawn to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, Jones changes his mind. This is the kind of event that would speak to his legacy. Jones wants to fight! On that card! Maybe against Alex Pereira! Wouldn’t that be sick?!
(Dana doesn’t think so; he says there’s a one-in-a-billion chance Jones gets on that card, which doesn’t deter Jones from lobbying.)
Oct. 25, 2025 – UFC 321: With the lineal champ Ngannou long gone and the non-lineal champ Jones now out of the picture, the stand-in champ Aspinall has the “interim” tag lifted from his title, and now finds himself the main man at heavyweight. Because he inherited the throne without beating Jones (or Ngannou), there are asterisks in the sky outnumbering the stars in heaven.
That means the UFC books him against … you guessed it, Ciryl Gane. The fight takes place in Abu Dhabi, and is meant to get the division moving again. Instead, toward the end of a competitive first round, Gane’s fingers end up knuckle-deep inside of Aspinall’s eye sockets, which brings the fight to a crashing halt.
The crowd boos. White discounts the injury. And Aspinall, left to defend himself more fiercely than he did any title, spends the next few months trying to prove that his eyes are in bad shape.
Nothing has ever been right since the double eye-poke of doom.
June 14, 2026 – UFC Freedom 250: With the now disputed heavyweight champion Aspinall on the mend, the UFC opts to book an interim heavyweight title between the one-time interim champion Gane and the two-division champion Pereira, who is moving to heavyweight to become the first fighter in UFC history to win titles in three weight classes. Gane scores a TKO victory over Pereira, yet many are left talking about the series of illegal blows he landed to the back of Pereira’s head.
Pereira spends the next few months roasting referee Herb Dean on a spit, while Gane steals off like a thief in the night with his second interim title, ready for a rematch. At this point, Gane’s record in lineal title fights is 0-1, in non-lineal title fights is 0-1-1 NC, and in interim title fights is 2-0.
Sept. 14, 2026: Aspinall vacates the heavyweight title, and it’s left for the UFC to decide whether to upgrade Gane to (hugely disputed) heavyweight champion status, or to have his next fight — either in the mulligan fight with Pereira, or with the schticky-yet-undefeated Josh Hokit — be for the vacant belt.
Between the original heavyweight champion Ngannou, the retired Jones, and the injured Aspinall, no titles are presently held yet no titles were ever lost. The UFC heavyweight belt has gone underground at this point, passing through subterranean hands with fingerprints all over it, none of which can be made out by the naked eye.
Forensics might have to be involved by the time it goes up for grabs again, but that’s the current state of the UFC heavyweight division.
Discover more from NAIRAVOICE.COM.NG
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
