Tom Aspinall may have to blink through the flood of messages he’s sure to be receiving, unable to keep up with Cyril Gane’s no-contest eye poke in the main event of UFC 321.
In the disappointing conclusion to their heavyweight title fight, Aspinall put his fingers directly in his eyes and stated multiple times that he was blind. As a result, referee Jason Herzog stopped the fight, but former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen couldn’t help but question Aspinall’s decision in that moment.
“It’s illegal to get poked in the eye, but fighting with one eye is common,” Sonnen said on the UFC 321 post-fight show. “Some of that is questionable for players like Anthony (Smith) and myself because opponents are trying to punch you in the eye and give you a nosebleed.
“We try to be polite and show grace, but to be fair, you’re the heavyweight champion of the world and sometimes you have to fight with one eye on you.”
Anthony Smith, who shared an analyst desk with Sonnen, had a similar opinion, especially after enduring a nasty eye poke in a match with Ryan Spann in 2023. That night, Smith chose to continue despite his impaired vision and knew exactly what to tell the ringside doctor and referee to keep the fight from stopping.
“I’m not saying it’s Tom’s fault, and I’m not pretending to know how bad it is or isn’t,” Smith said. “I think Chell made a poetic point about having to be used to or willing to fight with one eye. I did that in Singapore. Everyone always talks about it when a woman is waving things in front of me. I can’t see it. So what do I do? I just walk away and say, let’s fight.”
“You either want it or you don’t want it. My fight wasn’t for a world title. I didn’t have Cyril Gane throwing bombs in front of me, but the moment it happened I knew what to say because I wanted to continue. You can never say ‘I don’t see’ if you want the fight to continue.”
Sonnen couldn’t help but wonder if Aspinall, who entered the Octagon as the favorite to successfully defend his title, might face a tougher fight than he initially accepted.
Instead, Gane gave him everything he could handle, including a deft jab that destroyed Aspinall’s nose during the opening round.
Does that mean Aspinall was on his way to losing? Of course not, but Sonnen knows that the momentum right before the break was definitely in Gane’s favor.
“First of all, I thought the match was going to be a little more difficult than Tom expected,” Sonnen said. “I had one concern about Tom, and it’s not his fault just because he’s very good, but the reality is he killed six people in the first round. He’s never been to a third round fight, for example, so the question is how he reacts when the going gets tough. Tom was throwing bombs. If Tom had hit, it would have been over that night, and it would have been over for the previous six opponents. I’m just saying, when the opportunity came, when the opportunity came. Once you’ve had a little break, you can use that, or you can use that system to catch the wind. There was something about the way the story was told that caught your eye and never took it away.
“Remember, this cloth that he was putting on his eyes had ice in it. It wasn’t some magic cloth that was going to heal the cornea or the eye or take the swelling out. It had ice in it and it was just weirdly applied there. Then a conversation happened and a story was told and I had checked out fights before, I knew what it was like and I knew he was done.”
Replays show the intensity of the eye poke, but Sonnen clearly feels Aspinall probably still could have moved on, even if it meant fighting at the cost of an eye.
“He said, ‘I got poked in the eye and I can’t see,'” Sonnen said. “If you get poked in the eye and get injured, it’s a whole different story. If you get poked in the eye and you go blind, generally in our sport that’s just something you have to get over.”
Smith said whether he likes it or not, Aspinall is going to deal with some criticism in the aftermath of this whole ordeal, so he better be prepared to face the fallout.
“What the story is going to be tomorrow is that, as Chell tells it historically, Tom Aspinall was in a harder fight than he thought and was looking for a way out,” Smith said. “That becomes the story.
“That’s not what I mean. I never say that. But that’s what everyone else says.”