Ciryl
Gane recently went off on Tom
Aspinall.
Gane challenged Aspinall for the
Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title in October
last year. The fight ended in an unfortunate no-contest after a
double-eye poke from Gane left Aspinall unable to continue. The
Frenchman has now slammed his English counterpart, labeling him
“mentally fragile.”
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Ciryl Gane criticizes Tom Aspinall’s response to their
controversial UFC no-contest
Gane believes Aspinall had every right to stop fighting after
getting poked in the eye. However, “Bon Gamin” says it wasn’t wise
of the Brit to keep whining about it publicly after the fight. He
also claims that he kept fighting despite having compromised vision
after suffering an eye poke in his stoppage win over Derrick
Lewis in 2021.
“Tom Aspinall was seen as a monster really, like a freak of nature,
but when you look at the numbers, it’s a different story, you
know?” Gane said on the “Zack En Roue Libre” podcast. “There are a
lot of things like that where, even mentally, we knew he was a
little mentally fragile; we’d picked up on it with him. The way he
celebrated after fights, his body language, etc. How he
communicated and so on; we suspected he was a little fragile. And
in the end, sure enough, everything that happened after our fight
confirms that the guy complains quite a bit. Brother, you got poked
in the eye; you have the right to stop. That’s your right. Nobody
knows how you experience that pain. But you don’t need to do
everything you did in terms of public statements because it worked
against him in the end. It happened to me before, actually, when I
fought Derrick Lewis and won the belt. He poked me in the eye and
my vision hadn’t recovered, but I kept fighting. I didn’t complain
about it.”
Aspinall has remained sidelined with eye-related complications
since the bout. Gane won the interim heavyweight title by knocking
out Alex
Pereira at
UFC Freedom 250 this past June to set up a rematch and title
unification bout, but Aspinall recently vacated the title.
Gane has now been promoted to undisputed champion and is scheduled
to defend his title against the undefeated Josh Hokit
at UFC
334 on Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.