UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall is still working his way back to action after undergoing surgery on both of his eyes in the aftermath of his fight against Ciryl Gane this past October.
A double eye poke ended Aspinall’s first defense as undisputed champion with this fight against Gane ending in a no-contest. The controversial moment happened after Gane extended his hand in an exchange and two fingers jabbed Aspinall in each of his eyes.
The action was paused but Aspinall still couldn’t see enough to continue the fight and the bout was stopped.
“After his highly publicized eye poke injury, Optegra’s expert team is proud to have supported MMA fighter and UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall,” Aspinall’s doctors wrote on a post on Instagram. “Over recent months, we’ve been working closely with him on his recovery.
“Following his operation on both eyes we continue the journey to get Tom’s vision back to fighting fitness.”
The injury left Aspinall with poor vision, and he still hasn’t set a timetable on when he might be able to compete again as he continues undergoing treatment to get his vision fixed.
It was just about the worst possible outcome for Aspinall after he sat out for over a year awaiting his next fight while holding out hope that he would get to face Jon Jones in a title unification bout. Jones ultimately passed on the fight and relinquished his title, which elevated Aspinall to undisputed champion.
He was then booked against Gane for his first official defense but then the eye poke ended the contest just a few minutes into the opening round.
Immediately afterwards, UFC CEO Dana White announced plans to rebook the fight for a later date, but with Aspinall still recovering from the eye injury, there’s no word when that might actually happen.
Gane has also remained sidelined awaiting Aspinall to get cleared so the heavyweight title fight rematch could get booked.
