Jon Jones has finally weighed in on Tom Aspinall’s performance against Ciryl Gane, after the Briton’s first undisputed-title defence ended abruptly when he was poked in both eyes.
Aspinall was elevated from interim to undisputed heavyweight champion this summer when Jones retired from mixed martial arts, vacating the official belt in the process.
It ended a saga in which Jones, 38, delayed and delayed before finally opting not to face Aspinall, his natural next challenger.
And Aspinall’s first defence of the undisputed strap came on 25 October, when the Briton took on Ciryl Gane in Abu Dhabi. The main event of UFC 321 ended after four-and-a-half minutes, when Aspinall suffered a double eye poke from Gane and could not continue.
The bout was ruled a No Contest, Aspinall was taken to hospital, and UFC president Dana White said a rematch would be booked at the earliest opportunity. However, Aspinall was still struggling with his vision several days after UFC 321.
“I feel as [though] Tom’s a great athlete, but I do feel like he’s a one-trick pony,” Jones said on the No Scripts Podcast. “I believe that his wrestling and jiu-jitsu is incredibly overrated.
“He has a beautiful one-two. I got to learn a lot about his patterns in his last fight. Beautiful one-two, but that’s really about it.
“He couldn’t touch Ciryl Gane at all, that’s the way I feel. I feel like Gane was just getting warmed up. Gane’s hands were down, he was shaking his shoulders, bouncing around.”
Statistics showed that Gane, 35, had a slight edge over Aspinall, 32, in terms of strikes landed in their brief fight (30-27 in the Frenchman’s favour), with Gane bloodying the champion’s nose early before Aspinall grew into the round.
Gane also thwarted Aspinall’s lone takedown attempt, although a replay suggested the challenger accidentally poked Aspinall in the eye to prevent the takedown. That was prior to the fight-ending eye poke, with which Gane affected both of the Briton’s eyes at the same time.
“When Tom gets hurt, it’s like he’s immediately incapacitated,” Jones alleged. “Dude, I’d have been the silliest-looking cat on national TV just trying [to open my eye].
“Same thing with Curtis Blaydes: when [Tom] hurt his knee, there was no limping, there was no trying to get up. It was just immediately: ‘Burn my village, I can’t go on.’ He immediately quits.”
Jones was referring to Aspinall’s 2022 injury against Blaydes, when the Briton carried an issue into the fight and tore his MCL, meniscus, and damaged his ACL.
Against Aspinall, Gane was challenging for the undisputed heavyweight title for the third time, having lost to Francis Ngannou on points in 2022 and Jones via first-round submission in 2023.
Gane entered his bout with Ngannou as the interim champion, while his fight with Jones was over the vacant title.
