Tom Aspinall is finally the undisputed heavyweight champion, and ready to make the first defense of his title.
For the past two years, Aspinall has been caught up in the will-he-won’t-he-fight drama of Jon Jones, but now that Jones is retired (or, at least, did), Aspinall is the undisputed champ, and it’s time to go about the business of being champion. First up on that docket is former interim champion Ciryl Gane, who Aspinall faces in the main event of UFC 321 this weekend in Abu Dhabi.
This will be Aspinall’s second title defense (though first of his undisputed belt) and his first impression since the Jones fiasco finally ended. He obviously wants to win, but how important is it for him to start the new heavyweight era off right?
MMA Fighting’s Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, and Jed Meshew got together to discuss just that, plus the co-main event vacant title fight between Virna Jandiroba and Mackenzie Dern, and the rest of UFC 321.
1. How much pressure is on Tom Aspinall against Ciryl Gane?
Martin: Truth be told, the pressure on Tom Aspinall is almost immeasurable.
For the better part of the past two years, Aspinall has widely been considered the best heavyweight in the sport and he gained a whole lot of backers as he constantly called out Jon Jones in hopes of staging one of the biggest fights the UFC could possibly promote. But ultimately Jones vacated the belt to retire for all of two weeks and Aspinall was declared undisputed champion.
Now he’s facing the second best guy in the division in Ciryl Gane — the same guy who got dispatched by Jones inside three minutes and lost a decision to Francis Ngannou on one leg. Gane is a solid enough fighter but he effectively already reached his ceiling in two past title fights that didn’t go his way. He’s getting this opportunity off a highly controversial win over Alexander Volkov, which put him on a one-fight win streak to get this opportunity.
That should tell you how dreadful the heavyweight division is right now but Aspinall at least gives the UFC a marketable big man who can stand on the fact that he’s still around and Jones is nowhere to be found. But to maintain his grip as the best in the world, Aspinall can’t just beat Gane. He has to obliterate him. Ideally, he has to beat Gane faster than Jones did.
A win is a win so that’s really what matters but Aspinall losing would be an unmitigated disaster for the UFC. So first he needs to win and second Aspinall needs to make it look easy because assuming he gets through Gane, he doesn’t have anything really exciting awaiting him in what has truly become an abysmal division.
Meshew: I’m going the exact opposite of Damon: I think Tom has almost no pressure on him this weekend.
Does Aspinall want to win? Of course! He’s the heavyweight champion and this is a title defense. But does he need to win? Nah. Heavyweight is garbage. Even if he drops the belt on Saturday, he’ll be fighting for it again in no time.
And as for the Jones stuff, I don’t think that really matters. The fact is that Jones refused to fight Aspinall, not the other way around. If Aspinall loses, sure, Jones will make some snide Tweets about “just another wannabe” or whatever, but that won’t change the facts from the ground. Jones could’ve fought Aspinall and chose not to. Aspinall tried his hardest to fight Jones for two years. He doesn’t look worse for losing to some else.
Honestly, I think Gane has all the pressure in the world on him. If he loses, that’s probably his title aspirations shot, and at heavyweight, there’s nowhere else to go. A loss on Saturday, especially if it’s a bad one, puts Gane in the Rich Franklin zone for the rest of his career.
If there’s anyone who knows how important it is Aspinall take care of business, it’s us here at MMA Fighting. We kept Aspinall at No. 1 in our heavyweight rankings during the whole Jon Jones charade and while public sentiment widely shifted in that direction eventually, it still feels like Aspinall has some work to do to convince fans he’s not just undisputed because Jones ran away.
Add in the fact that Gane has the reputation of an also-ran (yes, he’s a former interim champion, no he couldn’t beat Francis Ngannou or Jones when it mattered) and Aspinall slipping on a banana peel in the UFC 321 main event would be a disaster.
A disaster for him, a disaster for us, and, frankly, a disaster for the (ironically) flimsy heavyweight division.
2. Can Virna Jandiroba or Mackenzie Dern carry Zhang Weili’s mantle?
Martin: The short answer? No.
It’s going to be awfully hard for anybody to put this division on their back after Zhang Weili cemented her place as one of the greatest women’s fighters of all time during multiple reigns atop this division. It must also be noted that Jandiroba is 37 and time is not on her side so this could be her only chance to become champion, although strawweight isn’t exactly thriving these days so anything is possible.
As for Mackenzie Dern, she’s finally getting her shot at a title after being hailed as the next Ronda Rousey when she first came to the UFC. Dern has remained a stalwart near the top of the rankings throughout her career but she’s come up short in basically every fight she’s had that could have put the multi-time grappling champion in position to compete for UFC gold. She’s also 2-2 in her past four fights so it’s a little difficult to get jazzed about her potentially becoming champion.
Jandiroba has a better record lately, although she’s fallen to Dern in the past, and decisions in four out of five of her most recent wins haven’t given her much hype either.
For Jandiroba or Dern to make people forget about Zhang, the winner needs to score a highlight reel finish or put on an all-time classic fight and then go onto defend the belt a couple of times. Maybe then Zhang’s shadow won’t loom so large but for now, these two are only fighting for a chance to eventually surpass the former champion.
Meshew: I’m with Damon on this one, the winner of the co-main event on Saturday is the real champion, but they won’t feel like it, possibly ever.
You’re talking to one of the few people who have never given up on Mackenzie Dern (I believe me and Shaheen Al-Shatti were the last two people on Dern island), and even I can acknowledge that no matter what happens on Saturday, people are going to view her as a semi-paper champion. Even if she flying triangles Virna in the first 20 seconds, the refrain will be “well, she wouldn’t have done that to Zhang.” And that refrain is correct.
The issue with a champion vacating a weight class is that it always makes the division seem a little fraudulent. Light heavyweight was lost in the forest after Jon Jones left, and only got back on track once Alex Pereira took over. Welterweight felt similarly strange when Georges St-Pierre left. To make people forget the former champion, you have to either a) be the uncrowned champion of the weight class beforehand like Tom Aspinall or Robert Whittaker, or b) put together a real title reign. Neither Dern nor Jandiroba qualify for option A, and I’d be pretty surprised if either pulled off option B.
But honestly, that’s fine. Strawweight has felt stagnant these past few years anyway, with very few title fights and a lot of the same names. Now at least something different is happening, and that might be enough to spark some interest.
Lee: I mean… no? And they shouldn’t have to.
Whoever wins Saturday won’t even be considered the best 115-pounder in the world right away, that’s just the reality of the situation. I’m not sure if people feel the same way about Ilia Topuria, but there is the sense that his undisputed champion at status is being held for review until Islam Makhachev confirms he’s never going back to 155 or if he gets the chance to beat Makhachev. Fair or not, these are the sacrifices that must be made for us to get cool superfights like Della Maddalena vs. Makhachev and Shevchenko vs. Zhang.
Obviously, Dern is best suited to be one of the faces of the promotion as she’s drawn eyeballs to her career since her days collecting gold medals on the jiu-jitsu scene. She’s gotten every possible push you can get from the UFC and if she can add MMA champion to her résumé, she might eventually surpass Zhang in popularity, at least in North America.
But matching Zhang’s excellence? Hey Virna and Mackenzie, just have a good fight, OK?
3. What non-title fight are you most interested in?
Martin: Remember that whole thing about the heavyweight division being dreadful? Well Alexander Volkov and Jailton Almeida might legitimately be competing for the next title shot and it doesn’t seem like anybody is talking about this fight.
Almeida has done his best to get Aspinall’s attention but his grappling heavy style coupled with getting knocked out by Curtis Blaydes just two fights ago doesn’t exactly set the world on fire. Volkov probably has a better argument, especially considering most believe he deserved the nod over Gane in their fight, but he also fell by submission in less than four minutes when he fought Aspinall the last time around in 2022.
If either one of these guys can pull off a truly impressive win — hopefully with a jaw-dropping knockout or a shocking submission — then either Volkov or Almeida could be staring down Aspinall or Gane in 2026.
Meshew: Look, the feature bout is obviously the correct answer, and there’s a special place in my heart for Ludovit Klein vs. Mateusz Rebecki (which is gonna BANG), but I have to be me, and there are few things that make me happier than weirdo MMA. And if that weirdo MMA can be at heavyweight? Woo, buddy, we’re cooking with gas!
The prelims on Saturday feature a horrendous matchup of two heavyweights who probably shouldn’t be on the UFC roster, but nonetheless offer their own oddball benefits: Hamdy Abdelwahab vs. Chris Barnett.
Abdelwahab is an Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler, who had his UFC debut win overturned to a No-Contest after testing positive for methenolone, only to later get popped again and get a two-year suspension! Somehow the UFC didn’t cut him after that, and he’s fought twice this year, going 1-1 in two of the worst fights you’ve ever seen. Now he’s on deck again!
And everybody knows about Barnett. Huggy Bear is 5’9, weighs so much, but is shockingly athletic for a man of his dimensions. He might get out there and throw a jumping spinning wheel kick, and not look ridiculous doing it! Except he’s still a heavyweight so he will gas after 4 minutes.
This fight is going to be impossibly stupid, probably terrible, and enormously fun if you’re a particular kind of sicko (basically, an Iowa football game). I’m that kind of sicko.
Calling Umar Nurmagomedov’s fight with Mario Bautista a do-or-die situation sounds a bit silly considering Nurmagomedov doesn’t even turn 30 until January. One could argue he isn’t near his peak yet and there are plenty of opportunities for him to become UFC champion in the future, whether it’s by beating Merab Dvalishvili in a rematch or simply hanging around long enough until Dvalishvili retires.
But Nurmagomedov had so much hype heading into their UFC 311 clash, that getting tripped up by Bautista could do immeasurable damage to his legacy. You can call fight fans a lot of things, but one thing they aren’t is forgetful when it comes to someone falling flat on their face.
Just matchup-wise, Nurmagomedov vs. Bautista is fascinating. Bautista has made a habit of making his opponents—how do I put this nicely—look like crap, which seems impossible given Nurmagomedov’s elite all-around skill set, but I would have said the same about Jose Aldo, Patchy Mix, and Ricky Simon. I don’t know how Bautista does it. He just neutralizes people.
The good news is no matter who wins, they should be vaulted right to the front of the bantamweight contender line, which moves quickly thanks to Dvalishvili’s ferocious fight schedule.
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