Outside Source
The former UFC middleweight champion endured multiple eye surgeries after suffering a detached retina in a knockout loss to Vitor Belfort in 2013. Ultimately, “The Count” lost vision and now wears a prosthetic replacement in his right eye.
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With reigning heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall announcing that he will undergo surgery on both eyes after being poked by Ciryl Gane in their UFC 321 meeting, Bisping weighed in on the situation. Aspinall’s future is currently uncertain, and longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan even speculated that the heavyweight king might not ever fight again.
“Because I had about five or six eye surgeries. I do know a little bit about this,” Bisping said on YouTube. “…Tom’s going to need, apparently, eye surgery. It will probably just be a minor thing like a realignment of the tendons but things can go wrong. Joe [Rogan] is absolutely correct, 100 percent, when he says things can go wrong.
“My retina was reattached after it was detached against Vitor Belfort and then it re-detached and then they fixed it again and then I got glaucoma. Because once you start messing around with the eyes, in fact just like any part of your body, once you start going in and messing around with it, it’s never the same again. It’s never quite as strong and things can go wrong.”
Aspinall was sidelined for more than a year as he waited for a title unification bout against Jon Jones. However, that bout never came to fruition, as Jones retired in June before re-entering the drug testing pool in hopes of fighting at the White House. As a result, Aspinall’s first fight since July 2024 came against Gane this past October.
Patience is Essential
While Aspinall might be eager to prove the naysayers wrong and get back in the Octagon, Bisping cautions his fellow Brit against coming back too soon.
“The one thing you can’t do with an eye is rush back,” Bisping said. “That is the one big lesson that I learned. Because I did that. I rushed back too soon. I rushed back to sparring. I rushed back to competition and I never saw out of that eye again.
“So Tom has got to take his time. If he’s having surgery, he’s definitely going to be out for at least a few months. I hate to say it, but it wouldn’t suprise me if coming up very soon that we have an announcement for an interim title fight.”
Aspinall has also endured his fair share of criticism for the situation, with some in the MMA community — including some fighters — questioning the severity of the injury.
“Some people out there, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Bisping said. “This is the heavyweight champion of the world. He’s not a duck. He’s not trying to get out of a fight. He wants to come back and kick Ciryl Gane’s ass. He put that in a tweet recently. The man’s pissed off and I can’t wait for the comeback.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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