Tom Aspinall vacates heavyweight belt and MMA world apologizes to him.

Tom Aspinall has had a rough ride as heavyweight champion of the UFC. In the past however many years it has been, the HW belt hasn't technically been won by anyone since Francis Ngannou and that was back in 2021.

Since that time the belt has had a manufactured champion and it didn't do much for the credibility of the division when Jon Jones was gifted a title shot for the vacated belt against Ciryl Gane. A fight that Jones won and while I do think that he would have defeated almost anyone else in the top 10 at that time as well, Gane was definitely NOT the best in the division. I'm not sure why they selected him. So much time has passed since then.

Tom Aspinall became the interim champion because Jones sort of refused to defend the belt and he is one of the few MMA fighters that would have gotten away with such an attitude for such a long time.

Aspinall won the title all the way back in 2023 and once again, it is Jon Jones that is largely to blame for this lapse in action at the top. Aspinall realized that beating anyone other than Jones would be seen as a fake title fight, and Jones claimed over and over again that Aspinall was not a worthy opponent and something along the lines of "fighting him would do nothing for his legacy."

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Aspinall is a good fighter. I would say that he is one of the only versatile fighters in the Heavyweight division at UFC. He can do it all. He can strike, he can wrestle, he's about as good a BJJ as a 6 foot 5 and 250lb guy can be, and he has cardio to boot.

One thing he doesn't have though, is eyeballs that can withstand fingers the size of Popsicles being shoved into them knuckle-deep.

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When this fight against Ciryl Gane went down as the "unification bout" and it was declared a no contest because Tom couldn't continue, I also joined in with the opinion of the crowd, the pundits, and Dana White at the time when they accused Aspinall of taking advantage of the situation and looking for the easy way out instead of finishing the fight.

Well it turns out we, the naysayers, were very wrong about the various opines.

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Tom has been turning down the opportunity to defend his "undisputed" title for some time now, citing the fact that his eyes still haven't recovered. He has had multiple procedures done on him and he claims that he still cant see properly and doctors are backing him up on this. Given the amount of time that has passed though, there has been a lot of not-so-deserved speculation about whether or not the dude is telling the truth.

Well perhaps in response to all of this criticism he voluntarily (or so they say) vacated the championship over the past week.

It is ironic and a bit sad that the person who was interim champion, and is now undisputed champion of the UFC heavyweight division is none other than the guy that poked him in the eyes to begin with.

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Ciryl Gane has wisely stayed silent about all of this. The world already doesn't really like him although I will say that his performance on the White House lawn at UFC 250 was very impressive. It was like he heard the talk about how he was a boring fighter, took it into account, and changed it up. It's still going to be a tough sell to get people who aren't French to like this guy though.

Almost as if they were told to do so, the pundits who had previously been very accusatory of Tom Aspinall to the point of accusing him of "faking it" have largely come out to apologize to him. One of the main voices has been Chael Sonnen, who is well-known for having a mouth on him that can get people worked up.

I kind of respect Chael, but I believe he was overly brutal on Tom Aspinall but hell, this is how Chael continues to remain relevant and it was a very big part of how he was offered top-tier fights when he was an active fighter. Multiple times his mouth got him into fights that his Win/Loss record didn't back up and for the most part, he was defeated. You can kind of look to Chael as the guy that sort of turned UFC into WWE where people with the most microphone skills were getting the big fights, not the best fighters.

Whatever your opinion of Chael is though, it's tough to argue with him about Tom's decision and how this is kind of proof that the injury is genuine.

A good side of this all is that there is likely some animosity on the part of Aspinall about how the guy who is now the champion is the main reason why he himself is not champion and likely doesn't even have the ability to regain it at the moment if he can't see.

This does set up a wonderful opportunity for the heavyweight division to do something that the fans might actually care about if Gane does get to fight Aspinall in the future. There currently isn't any talk about that but you better believe that the wheels are turning over at UFC since nobody really cares about the heavyweights right now, for a lot of reasons.

Tom's medical clearance is pending but the earliest that is being predicted is January 2027. In the time leading up to that we are probably going to get a string of more boring HW fights. I hope Tom can come back and breathe some life into this once exciting, but now forgotten, weight division.