Tom Aspinall is still suffering from the damage done during his title defence at UFC 321, with the heavyweight champion’s father revealing his son still has no vision out of his right eye.
The 32-year-old retained his heavyweight title against Cyril Gane over the weekend after the bout was ruled a no-contest when the Brit sustained a devastating eye poke in the first round.
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Aspinall, who couldn’t see out of his right eye afterwards, was taken to hospital for tests before flying back to England to see an eye specialist on Monday.
Andy Aspinall, the fighter’s father and coach, posted a worrying update on his son’s condition on Wednesday morning.
“His right eye – he still can’t see anything. He said it’s just grey,” he said.
“His left eye’s about 50%, so one’s really blurry and one’s still not working.”
The UFC star will undergo more tests this week, including a CT scan “to see if the bones are all right”.
Andy said that the fight team hasn’t been overly worried about backlash to the incident from some fans and pundits who believe Aspinall ‘quit’, insisting that his son’s vision is more important right now.
“For me, everything’s about his health,” Andy said.
“It’s not about fighting, that’s just what he chose to do as a job and one of the consequences you can get hurt.
“But it’s a bad consequence if you lose your sight, especially by a foul. And I’m not getting at Ciryl Gane in any way, this happens a lot in MMA.
“If you commit a foul with an eye poke, the referee just says, ‘Don’t do it.’
“Nobody’s ever lost a fight because of an eye poke and I’m not saying somebody should win or lose, but the safety of the thing is paramount and I’m fed up with saying if it was somebody else’s son, they would say what I say.
“If your son’s fighting, you want him to be as safe as you can and he got poked in the eye and it’s bad and he could have lost his sight.
“Still not got his sight in one eye, so we don’t know, we’re still waiting. Time is a healer, hopefully.”
Like many fight fans who have been shocked by the number of eye pokes that occur in the sport, Andy believes something needs to be changed at a structural level to stop it from happening.
“The UFC have got some rules. What will it take to change those rules? Will it take somebody’s eye being poked and falling on the floor?,’ he asked.
“I don’t think that’s a thing, I’m sure it’s not, but what does it take? Is it the money? That people won’t watch the fights because they’re not as exciting because the gloves are not as good.
“I don’t know the answer. The old PRIDE gloves were different. But something, from my point of view, needs to be done in the sport to stop what happened on Saturday night in Tom’s fight.”