Tom Aspinall has faced plenty of accusations that he was looking for a way out of his fight against Ciryl Gane after suffering an eye poke late in the first round in their fight at UFC 321.
The latest jab at Aspinall comes from former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, who reacted to the unfortunate stoppage after watching the fight in Abu Dhabi. Jones, who was supposed to face Aspinall in a heavyweight title unification bout, has been very critical towards the British heavyweight, especially in the aftermath of how this particular fight ended.
“When Tom gets hurt, he’s like immediately incapacitated,” Jones told the No Scripts podcast. “Immediately. It’s like you poke my eye, there was no like [trying to blink it out]. I would have been the silliest looking cat on national TV [blinking my eyes] trying [to continue].”
While Aspinall has posted photos on social media showing that he’s still wearing an eye patch and talking to doctors to confirm the damage done from the poke, Jones has seen enough to believe he recognizes a pattern of behavior.
Jones previously claimed that he learned a lot about Aspinall after watching him tap out in his first professional loss back in 2015 and his conviction has only been strengthened by this latest incident.
“He did the same thing with Curtis Blaydes when he hurt his knee,” Jones said referencing Aspinall suffering a torn ACL just 15 seconds into his fight back in 2022. “There was no limping. There was no trying to get up. He was just immediately ‘burn my village, I can’t go on!’
“He immediately quits. When he got tapped out with an ankle lock [in his first loss], there was no trying to fight his hands. He immediately quit. Immediately.”
In the aftermath of Aspinall’s fight against Gane ending in disappointing fashion, Jones took a shot at the UFC heavyweight champion by changing his profile photo on Twitter to a duck wearing an eye patch. He previously put up the image of a duck after being accused of retiring from the sport rather than facing Aspinall in a title unification bout.
Then during an appearance at Dirty Boxing 4 in Florida, Jones showed up riding a horse and the horse was also wearing an eye patch as an obvious dig at Aspinall.
“I’m just having fun with it,” Jones said about trolling Aspinall. “He had at it with me, he had a long time coming at me so it’s to keep the fans engaged. It’s just to keep things fun.”
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