Athletes
Tom Aspinall: 'I Am The Next Heavyweight Champion'
A Year After Suffering A Major Knee Injury, Tom Aspinall Is Intent On Showing His Best Self In His Return To Action At UFC Fight Night: Aspinall vs Tybura
Tom Aspinall feels amazing when we talk on the phone in June. “The best ever,” he says.
He quibbles a little bit, knowing the cliché nature of that statement, but Aspinall really hasn’t ever felt this good. Part of that is having two healthy legs underneath him for the first time in five years. Beyond that, Aspinall can’t help but gush about the way he feels. The only thing that’s a bit of a buzzkill is the amount of media obligations he has on this particular day. He can’t help but bemoan the basic questions he is getting asked on more mainstream sports channels in England.
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Such is life for the UK’s top heavyweight, though, and so Aspinall said he is happy to smile through an explanation about what it’s like to get punched in the face for a living.
Jokes aside, life is good for Aspinall. He is nearing a return to action nearly a year to the day of his last fight, which ended with him grasping his right knee and beginning a year-long recovery process. While that memory is tied to pain both physical and mental, enough time passed to where the always-thoughtful Aspinall sees the bright side of it all.
“I just feel like that year off helped me find what’s right for my body,” Aspinall told UFC.com. “It helped me figure myself out more as an athlete. Just going to the gym and smashing myself – four hours training a day and then just having the other 20 hours doing whatever I want — I’m not really like that anymore. I live as an athlete now. I make sure I get the right rest, the right recovery stuff. My diet is good. Everything is in a good spot now.”
When Aspinall first arrived to the UFC in July 2020, he was an injection of young talent into a heavyweight division desperate for it. Despite stature as a bright prospect with big expectations, Aspinall continuously emphasized his intention to take it slow. He didn’t help himself, though.
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Four finishes in less than 10 total minutes landed him a main event against Alexander Volkov in UFC’s return to London in March 2022 – another test which he’d ace in half a round.
Having turned 30 in April, Aspinall now speaks as a man keen on squeezing the most out of the opportunities at hand. He saw all his momentum come to a screeching halt against Curtis Blaydes, but it was a speed bump he anticipated. Now past it, a healthy Aspinall is raring to go, and he feels like he has a point to prove.
Now, he just wants to feel one thing come July 22: free.
“I feel like I’ve been locked down for a year from doing what I love,” Aspinall said. “I want that freedom again. I want to get in there and express myself and show everybody this is what I’ve been working on. Let’s not forget about me. I’m not the guy that falls over with a sore leg after 15 seconds. I want to go out there and show everyone what I’m all about. I think I want to feel free because that’s the feeling I love. Just freedom.”
A Newfound Level Of Commitment
Embarrassment. Pain. Regret. Guilt.
Any negative emotion you can name, Aspinall felt it as he laid in the center of the Octagon holding his right knee in pain. What was supposed to be a statement-making, title shot-earning night against Curtis Blaydes was over before it started.
Four months prior, the London-faithful exited the arena singing Tom Aspinall’s name. Now, they watched in dead silence as Aspinall kept his knee bent at a 90-degree angle and winced when the doctor inspected it.
Aspinall felt a wave of guilt come over him. He wanted to put on a show for everyone who paid a lot of money to support him. Instead, they would leave on the sourest of notes, and Aspinall still cannot shake that sense of shame.
“When you’re from where I’m from, London might as well be freakin’ Mars,” he said. “Going to watch an event at the O2 in London as someone from the northwest of England, where not a lot goes on, is a big deal and very expensive. There were a lot of people form my area — and I’m talking thousands of people, not like a couple of people, thousands of people — who made the trip down and saved up for months, and I mean months, in advance. They’re from the northwest of England, where the average pay-rate is not very high, and it’s a massive trip for people to go to London and watch and support someone in the O2.
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“(The injury) couldn’t have been helped, but I still take that massive guilt on. I’ve got to show up on the 22nd of July and show everybody this is why you stuck with me, and this is why you were there, and it’s all part of the journey, and it’s going to come good.”
When we visited him in September 2022 as he started his recovery process, he took us to his favorite fish and chips joint in Atherton to get a “proper chippy.” While standing in line, Aspinall explained that when he was in school, he and his friends hopped a fence to come to this same shop during lunchtime to grab a cone of chips. Before we go up to order, someone in line recognizes Aspinall — who, at 6-foot-5 and 250-pounds, is hard to miss — and lights up when Aspinall obliges his request for a picture.
After ordering from a stern man whom Aspinall said is the same from his own childhood, we step outside the shop to keep talking. Every few minutes or so, a car passes by and honks its horn, and Aspinall turns and waves in acknowledgement. This is home.
Although any professional athlete is mindful of nutrition, heavyweights can often get away with a looser eating plan without worrying about an eventual weight cut. When Aspinall suffered his injury, his physio and surgeon emphasized the impact proper nutrition and rest would have on his recovery process, and he took that advice to heart. Now, Aspinall says he lives like “a proper athlete,” which also means simplifying one’s lifestyle a bit, as well.
“I just really became obsessed with (recovery),” Aspinall said. “I feel like I realized that to be the highest level in anything, you need to be incredibly selfish and also be a bit of a boring bastard as well in terms of there’s not a lot else you can really do in your life apart from this, and that’s what I’ve really been focused on.”
As Aspinall’s father and coach, Andy, tactfully put it, he is “away from all the sh*t now.”
The elder Aspinall recalls a handful of conversations with his son where the two laid it all out. If Tom wanted to achieve the goals he had the chance to accomplish, he needed to make a few lifestyle changes.
“(Tom) went away and came back and said, ‘I’ve gotta do everything perfectly,’” Andy said. “I said, ‘You got five to 10 years to give it your best go, and you’ll look back and sit in a chair like I did and think, “Well, I probably could have done it, but I didn’t do it properly.” You got to give yourself the best chance and get the best of everything. You’ve made a bit of money out of doing it. You can afford the time to do it. Don’t sit back when you’re old and say, “I wish I had done it some other way.”’”
Before Tom could make those lifestyle changes, he needed to recover from surgery. Those first few days were admittedly tough. He remembers sitting in the London hospital during a historically warm summer just wanting to go home to his wife and kids.
When he did return up north, the first week was a bit challenging as his mobility was hampered, which limited how much he could play with his kids. After that, he was just happy to have the ability to sit outside in tolerable-to-nice weather instead of the grey, rainy winter months while he waited for his knee to heel.
“If that (injury) was in the winter, mate, when it’s freezing cold and raining all day, that would’ve been extra tough,” he said. “I’m so thankful that it at least happened when I could sit in the garden and get out of the house a little bit and stuff like that. People were doing stuff like having barbecues, and you don’t need to have two legs for stuff like that, so I’m just really glad and appreciative of the people around me that tried to pick me up. It was a really tough time for me, so I’m really appreciative of the people who were there for me in that time.”
Whether it was a message from a family member, friend, fellow fighter or someone random online, they all helped keep the energy as positive as it could be during those early days of the rehab process.
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Even though a major injury and surgery would put some doubts into anyone’s mind, Andy remained steadfast, seeing his son on the mend as just a bump on the road.
“You're doing sport, and you're going to get knee injuries, so get on with it,” he said. “That's just the way (Tom) took it. You know, he was bad for a few weeks when he didn't know the extent of the damage, and surgeons are always the err on the side of caution all the time. Well, he's a huge fit, super healthy guy and it's just a knee injury. He's going to get back from the knee all right.”
That all said, as I begin to dig into my order of fish, chips and gravy — the gravy is crucial and non-negotiable, according to Tom — I catch the Top 5 heavyweight eyeing my food with envy.
“I wish I could have that for the first time, again,” Aspinall says laughing, his words dripping with envy.
The discipline is paying off, though. Aspinall isn’t shy about his physique these days, joking in February that “Jacked Up Tommy” is coming soon. Instagram posts confirm as much.
A new Tom Aspinall was, as they say, loading.
Truly Better Than Ever
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Aspinall always meant to get surgery on his right knee.
He actually felt “instability” in it about five years ago. Occasionally, when he would kneel, his knee would lock up for a moment before returning to some sort of normal. But other than some swelling and stiffness, it was manageable enough. He kept winning fights, getting fights, and staying in camp, so fixing his knee kept getting knocked down the priority list until it finally went.
A torn MCL and ACL later, he actually feels better than he has in some years.
“It’s such a luxury,” he said. “I didn't even realize what a luxury it is to be able to train with two legs.”
A more mobile Aspinall is a scary prospect. He already looked like one of the quickest heavyweights on the roster with footwork and reflexes sharp enough to take advantage of that speed. Andy says the repaired wheel has unlocked a few skills for Aspinall, such as kicking off both legs and a left hook his son couldn’t sit down on until now.
On top of that, Tom has more heavyweight training partners than ever before.
Finding other big bodies to move with is hard for any heavyweight in MMA. Each gym might only have a handful, and that number drops significantly when it comes to England.
Andy would watch Tom feel the difference training with heavyweights versus the smaller bodies he moved with under Team Kaobon and thought about how he could better set his son up for success.
He recalled his friend Peter Fury bringing in heavyweights, including Tom, ahead of Tyson Fury’s title fight with Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. He went into his diary of heavyweights and set up a few training sessions. Everyone enjoyed the work, and word spread. Now, Andy is running sessions for up to 15 other heavyweights on a daily basis. Among the crop of training partners is Contender Series alumnus Mick Parkin, who makes his UFC debut on July 22.
“It’s actually ridiculous,” Tom said. “These aren’t just heavyweights who are just big. These are good-level heavyweights. We’ve got guys in other top organizations who are coming down all the time to train. That’s just the way it worked out. We’ve just got a heavyweight squad going, and everything is great.”
The Aspinalls both laugh at the suggestion that they should come up with a team name at this point, but they also can’t help but rave about the environment they’ve created.
Each day, Andy comes up with the day’s training, and Tom assesses what works or doesn’t work for him.
“I don't have to be the guru that tells him everything,” Andy said. “He knows what’s good for him. He’s a professional, mixed martial arts guy who's competed at a good level of martial arts. He knows if what we’re going to do that day is a waste of time for him, and straightaway say, ‘I’d never do that.’ He’ll just come over and say, ‘Dad, I don’t want to do this today because this is not suiting the style,’ and I’ll just change it.”
When we talk on the phone in February, rehab is going well for Tom. He started sparring on occasion, although he is the first to say sparring out of camp versus sparring in camp are very different things.
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At this point, he didn’t have a fight booked. He was looking forward to Jon Jones’ heavyweight debut against Ciryl Gane, naturally keeping a keen eye on the result. Jones is a dream fight for anyone, and a fight with Gane seems like an eventuality. There wasn’t a clear opponent in mind, but he was feeling that anxiousness that can seep in during the middle of the recovery process. He was almost ready, but not yet.
“I would be lying if I didn't say that I miss competition in my life,” he said. “It gives me a pretty good direction, I think, something always to work towards. Sometimes I struggle a little, but it has been nice to just train with no play date in mind.”
It’d be just a couple more months before the return date is set and Tom would have that direction back in his life.
A Point To Prove
Despite groaning a bit about the amount of media he needed to do, Aspinall is buzzing ahead of his return. He can talk about his injury and recovery in the past tense now.
In the rearview mirror, Aspinall is thankful for those who kept him on their mind while the MMA calendar kept spinning forward.
“I appreciated all of it,” he said. “Even if someone just texted me and took the time to text me – I got loads of messages of support from loads of different people. There’s no one person that’s more important than the next person. A lot of fighters messaged me, a lot of celebrities messaged me and stuff like that, and that didn’t mean anything more to me than someone I didn’t know messaging me or whatever. Anybody that would say nice things to me would pick me up, to be honest, so I appreciated it from everybody.”
Aspinall’s sole focus for the last few weeks has been Marcin Tybura. The 37-year-old is in the best form of his seven-year tenure in the UFC. Winner of seven of his last eight, Tybura feels like the exact right opponent for Aspinall.
In Aspinall’s eyes, it was the only matchup that made sense when he looked at the rankings and saw the majority of the Top 10 booked. While the two have traded a barb here and there, it’s mostly civil between them.
Behind Tom will be Andy in his corner, who has high expectations of his son but also hopes he sees Tom “just enjoy” the fruits of his labor come July 22.
“I'd like (Tom) to show how good he is because I don't think we've seen a heavyweight yet like this, but I've always thought that,” Andy said. “He is probably the best finisher I've seen in combat sport for a long, long time, especially for a big guy. He can see finishes, and he finishes. I wish he'd dance around and show how good he can box. I wish he'd just take somebody down, a bit of ground-and-pound, the opponent can get back up and start boxing again, take him down again when you want to do it. Slip and slide and all that good stuff that he can do — I’d like him to show all that in fights.”
Whether or not he does put it all on display is kind of up to Tybura. So far, none of Aspinall’s opponents have particularly pushed him. Blaydes probably would have had the knee not gone, but the most adversity Aspinall saw probably came against Andrei Arlovski. The former champ didn’t really get the best of Aspinall, though. He just survived a big flurry in the first round and is the only person to make it past the opening frame against Aspinall in his last nine fights.
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Aspinall would go on to submit Arlovski a little more than a minute into the next round, so even that sample size wasn’t the most revealing.
When Aspinall was early in his UFC tenure, he would talk about taking the slow road toward title contention. He enjoyed quick finishes not only because it meant a quick night of work, but also because he could keep his full ability a mystery for a little bit longer. Now, he admits, he was reserved because he always knew his knee needed fixing at some point. With that out of the way, he’s not holding anything back.
“(Tybura) got me at the worst time he could ever get me because I am unbelievably hungry right now,” Aspinall said. “I am ready to show everybody that I am just the next heavyweight champion, honestly. I’m ready to show everybody what I’m all about.”
Speaking to his stature in the European MMA scene, Aspinall shies away from calling himself the “face” of it, citing names like Leon Edwards, Ciryl Gane and Khamzat Chimaev. He talks to former champion and Manchester native Michael Bisping on occasion about handling all that comes with being a big name in the scene.
Aspinall feels like he hasn’t accomplished quite enough yet to be in that argument, but ahead of his third consecutive headliner in London, he can’t argue against having a spot on the shortlist of Europe’s biggest names.
For now, he’s just ready to get after it and make the walk. After 364 days, all of Aspinall’s work – rehab, recovery, training – over the last year gets unleashed. He is ready to call his shot, to remind any shortsighted fans why he is so highly touted and tabbed for title contention.
Finally, Aspinall gets to taste that freedom once again.
UFC Fight Night: Aspinall vs Tybura took place live from the O2 Arena in London, England on July 22, 2023. See the Final Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC Fight Pass!
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