From visa complications to crippling back pain, Tom
Aspinall had a lot going on in the lead up to his short-notice
interim title fight against Sergei
Pavlovich at UFC
295.
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While Pavlovich was supposed to be the backup for the originally
scheduled title clash between Jon Jones and
Stipe
Miocic, Aspinall stepped up on less than three weeks’ notice
when that fight fell through. The Brit recently revealed that he
couldn’t even train for most of whatever little time he had due to
severe backache.
Aspinall shared footage of when his back suddenly stiffened up
during training due to no apparent reason. Unable to train or even
walk for a couple of days after, Aspinall revealed on “The
MMA Hour” that he considered pulling out of the fight.
“I just wanted to get one good spar under my belt before we
basically leave and travel to the U.S.” Aspinall said. “This was in
the fourth round of sparring. Never experienced anything like it
before. I just had a crazy back spasm, and my back just seized up.
Nothing really even happened, and my back just stiffened up really
badly. I was basically unable to work out from that point onward.
It did get a little better, and luckily, my team was amazing and
just shifted everything around so I could get some really good
treatment. For a couple of days there, I just like, ‘S—t, what am I
going to do?’”
If his troubles weren’t already enough, Aspinall also had to travel
to the other end of country to London more than once to sort out
his visa.
“So yeah, it was wild. It was absolutely crazy. I didn’t have a
visa,” he said. “I had to do a million phones with the visa thing,
the travel, and go to London a couple of times, which is the
opposite side of the country from where I live. So it was
absolutely crazy.”
Despite a wild two weeks, Aspinall went on to score a spectacular
first-round KO win over Pavlovich at the Madison Square Garden in
New York. While there was a lot of anxiety on his mind going into
the fight, Aspinall wanted to find out who he really is when pushed
to deep waters.
“Ultimately, this is what draws me to this sport is, I want to find
out what I’m like as a person, said Aspinall, who added that his
back is fine now. “What is Tom like when s—t goes south? And a lot
of stuff has been going south for me in this buildup, a lot of
obstacles are coming my way. But as I kept saying in the pre-fight
interviews, I know one thing for sure, I’m definitely not going to
win the fight by watching it on TV.”