Tom Aspinall releases new eye doctor video, ‘guarded’ prognosis reveals ‘long road ahead’ for UFC champ

Tom Aspinall was supposed to “get the heavyweight division going.”

Instead, it’s at a standstill for the second time this year. That’s because the heavyweight champ was poked in the eyes by “angry” Ciryl Gane in the UFC 321 main event a few weeks back in Abu Dhabi. The bout was ruled a “No Contest” and both fighters returned to the sidelines for the remainder of 2025.

It’s something of a gray area.

“So when he’s looking up and in, the left eye is going up and in extremely well,” Aspinall’s doctor said. “The right eye is kind of stopping. That’s a restriction. So the eye wants to go, and he wants to track it, but the more I do this, the more he’s gonna start aching in that upper inner aspect, and what he’s gonna do is, if he’s in a fight situation, he’s not gonna be dealing with it. He doesn’t want the ache in the eye, and he also doesn’t want to have doubles.”

Here’s a clip from Aspinall’s recent visit.

Sounds like Aspinall is going to be out for awhile.

“It’s a long road ahead, but the prognosis is guarded at the moment,” the doctor added. “I would recommend that you wouldn’t fight until your double vision is resolved for two reasons. One, it could potentially make things worse and set you back even further. Or that you’re training, because you’re still having double vision looking into the periphery, you wouldn’t be at your peak. So that’s my two, the main reason.”

That should give UFC referees plenty of time to figure out how to start enforcing fouls.