Outside Source
Tom Aspinall is still having trouble with his vision three days after UFC 321. | Getty/UFC
It hasn’t been a quick recovery for Tom Aspinall following what transpired in the UFC 321 main event.
Aspinall’s first undisputed heavyweight title defense ended prematurely when Ciryl Gane poked him in both eyes late in the first round of their bout at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi this past Saturday. When it was determined Aspinall couldn’t continue, the bout was ruled a no contest at the 4:35 mark of Round 1.
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Three days after the bout, Aspinall is still undergoing tests to determine the severity of the injury to both eyes. The champion’s father, Andy Aspinall, provided an update on the fighter’s condition following a visit with an eye doctor on Monday.
“We got an appointment yesterday morning with a friend of ours who is one of the doctors from the UFC. He got us a private appointment at Cheadle Hospital to see an eye specialist yesterday. [The doctor] said it’s bad, it’s not good,” Andy Aspinall said on YouTube. “But his eye is a little bit more closed than it was. His right eye, he still can’t see anything. He said it’s just grey, and they tested him on words and he just couldn’t see anything. His left eye, 50% — he went down about four letters and then he just couldn’t see the letters. So one’s really, really blurry and one’s still not working.
“He [the doctor] said it was really bad, how it looks. And he said you can’t train your eyeball to be stronger — it is what it is… He could have got knocked out with a head kick next and it could have been worse.”
While Aspinall’s vision is still far from 100%, his father said it doesn’t appear the heavyweight champion will be subject to the worst-case scenario. Still, there is more to be determined with further tests in the days to come.
“He said sometimes when your eyes heal like that, it can become displaced and stay there,” Andy Aspinall said. “And they did a few tests on that and they said it doesn’t seem like that, and his vision on the eye that’s the best eye, his eye wasn’t following properly, so the muscles weren’t working strong enough to [turn]. This one [the right eye] just wasn’t working that good at all, so we’ve got to have additional tests for this week … He’s got obviously a CT scan to see if the bones are all right, but they think the bones are all right.”
‘Everything is About His Health’
Assuming Aspinall returns to full health, a rematch with Gane appears to be the next order of business— though it’s unclear exactly when that might be. For a concerned parent, the fighting career is not the main priority at this point in time.
For me, everything is about his health,” Andy Aspinall said. “It’s not about fighting — that’s just what he chose to do. It’s a job and one of the consequences is you could get hurt. But it’s a bad consequence if you lose your sight.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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