Joe Rogan pushed back on the criticism Tom Aspinall received after his UFC 321 no-contest with Ciryl Gane, saying the heavyweight champion was blamed for a fight-ending foul instead of given room to recover.
Rogan discussed Aspinall during JRE MMA Show #183 with Rico Verhoeven. Verhoeven said he has trained with Aspinall for close to 10 years, and the exchange quickly moved into the backlash after Gane poked Aspinall in the eyes.
Of course. He’s a very good friend of mine. Yeah, we trained so much already for like I think close to 10 years.
Man, he got a bad deal. He got really [expletive] over for that fight. You know, the way people got upset at him for stopping the fight with those eye pokes, that to me, that drove me crazy. Like, what do you expect the guy to do? He’s defending the heavyweight title. He get poked in the eyes and he can’t [expletive] see. And he’s had two eye surgeries since then.
Aspinall has spoken about the recovery since then, including the way the eye surgery compared with a vasectomy after the UFC 321 foul.
Verhoeven said Aspinall’s character made the reaction harder to accept, even while acknowledging why some fans focused on Gane’s early success before the foul.
And he’s the nicest guy. He’s the nicest guy and he works incredibly hard. And he would never, never, even though because I understand where it comes from from the people to a certain extent because they feel like, hey, Gane was doing so good in the beginning of the fight, but it was just the beginning of the fight. It was just like the first round or whatever.
The fight ain’t over till it’s over, right? So, you can have an opinion about that, the first round and I get an eye poke. Oh, now he’s going to stop because he knew he was behind or whatever. He would never, never in whatever world do that because he has looked at the eye poke. He was knuckled deep in his eye.
It was like gone.
Rogan And Verhoeven Discuss Gane’s Fouls
The conversation did not frame Gane as a malicious fighter. Verhoeven said he knows Gane too, while Rogan described the eye-poke problem as a bad habit from a long striker framing with an open hand.
Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, Ciryl Gane has a history of doing that. He’s done that also. And definitely I truly believe, because I know Ciryl as well, he’s also a very nice guy and I do not believe he’s doing that intentionally to [expletive] with people or whatever.
It’s just a bad instinct that keeps happening, you know, guy charging at you. You’re doing this and you’re running right into eyeballs. It’s just, they need to stop doing it. You know, I mean, there’s a bunch of different conversations about how to stop it. One of them is change the gloves.
You don’t need open fingers like that. You don’t need that for grappling. They could cover the tip of it like a mitten, you know, and there’s a way to do that where it would probably eliminate a lot of the eye pokes.
Another one is there’s a guy named Trevor Wittman from Onyx Sports, who’s Justin Gaethje’s trainer, who makes a much better glove. In his glove, your hand is in this position all the time. Instead of the UFC glove, your hand’s like this. You have to pull it down to tighten up the fist. In with Trevor’s gloves, it’s curved like this. So, this is a natural position.
So, when Muay Thai fighters like Ciryl Gane, they frame off like that all the time, right? You know that. So when you have those UFC gloves, you’re framing off like this. And that’s when you’re running into eye pokes, you know? So they try to tell you, keep your fingers up, which is great, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way.
Aspinall And Gane Still Sit In The Same Heavyweight Argument
Rogan separated the foul debate from Gane’s overall skill. He said he did not view Gane as dirty, then praised the French heavyweight’s movement after revisiting the Alex Pereira fight.
You know, I don’t think Ciryl Gane’s a dirty fighter. I just think he’s trying to finish fights.
Like Alex Pereira thought he was dirty for hitting him in the back of the head. And I watched the fight over again to watch it. And what I saw is Alex is moving, Ciryl’s trying to hit him. And sometimes when that happens, some of the shots are going to land on the back of the head.
When you look at his performance in that fight against Alex Pereira, it was fucking extraordinary, man.
Ciryl Gane can fucking move, man. He’s 250 pounds. But it’s the way he moves is so extraordinary. And I think some of that is because of basketball.
Verhoeven also described moving around with Gane while filming Den of Thieves 2, then brought the comparison back to Aspinall.
He’s such a nice guy. He’s so light, so light. He moves around so light and so hard to hit, man. He’s never been in trouble in the fight. I mean, he got finished by Jon Jones, but that was a submission. And Francis Ngannou just beat him by grappling, but he’s never been like rocked or staggered.
Especially for a big guy. But that’s why I believe Tom has that as well.
Well, his blitz is extraordinary. His ability to cover distance is insane. And he’s got one punch knockout power.
He’s so explosive. Like boom. I believe he can be a good boxer, but he can also be a good kickboxer and he’s a good MMA fighter. He’s so all around because when he came to kickbox, wow.
The heavyweight debate around Aspinall has stayed active since the no-contest. Jon Jones recently picked Gane over Aspinall if the rematch happens, and Eddie Hearn has been pulled into the Aspinall business story after speaking publicly about the UFC champion.
Rogan Says The Criticism Missed The Foul
Well, I just hate that fans reacted the way they reacted. And it’s the casual ones, it’s the shitheads. For me, I was like, God, you got to give the guy some grace. He got his eye poked out. I mean, he literally was knuckled deep in his eyes.
For anyone to think that he should be fighting with one eye like that, who cares, keep fighting, that’s insane. He got fouled. It’s not because of a punch. It’s not because he got kicked or an elbow. It’s a foul.
And so, no, the fight should have been stopped the way it was. And that’s that. Everybody should understand that it’s not his fault. It was his opponent’s fault.
Rogan also tied Aspinall’s future to the boxing side of the discussion after Verhoeven asked about the UFC. His point was that fighters should chase the best money available when leverage is there.
For Tom, I mean, look, he has a potential career in boxing as well. And now that Eddie Hearn is managing him, which is very exciting, because Matchroom being behind him, he’s going to have a gigantic hype machine, gigantic promotion. I think it’s huge and that they’re at odds with the UFC. For me, I care about the fighters making the most money possible.
Aspinall remains tied to the top of the heavyweight picture because the UFC 321 ending left the title without a clean sporting answer. Rogan’s new point was simple: the no-contest came from a foul, not from Aspinall choosing a way out of a legitimate defeat.
