Tom Aspinall has made it clear that he prefers Curtis Blaydes as his next opponent over Ciryl Gane.
Despite winning the UFC interim heavyweight title with a knockout over Sergei Pavlovich last November, Aspinall is currently in a bit of a fix regarding his next fight. While champ Jon Jones is sidelined with an injury, he is expected to return against Stipe Miocic. That leaves Aspinall with only two logical opponents, Blaydes and Gane.
Having seemingly given up all hopes of fighting Jones or Miocic next, Aspinall's next choice is Blaydes, who derailed Brazilian contender Jailton Almeida’s hype train at UFC 299 last month with a second-round knockout. The interim champion wants to correct an unfortunate injury loss he suffered against Blaydes in 2022, when he blew out his knee in 15 seconds, leading to the only blemish on his UFC record.
“Curtis Blaydes… Because we were supposed to fight, we had a fight for 15 seconds, I injured my knee and he has a win over me,” Aspinall said on "The MMA Hour”. “So of course I want "First of all, let’s not beat around the bush here, Jon Jones is the guy I wanna fight. But that’s not happening. Then we’ve got Stipe, of course, he’s free, makes sense. That’s not happening. So the next guy I wanna fight, Curtis Blaydes, because we’ve got some unfinished business. Nothing against Curtis personally, I actually like Curtis, we spent some good time together. I met his dad [and] everything, met his team, great people, like, top of the food chain type people, my kind of people. But professionally, we’ve got a big problem here and I want to get that one back.”
Though the Englishman won’t turn down a matchup against Gane if the UFC brings it to him, he isn’t keen on fighting the Frenchman, who has ducked him on multiple previous occasions. Aspinall further noted that he isn’t the only fighter “Bon Gamin” has ducked.
“I'll take him out then… He's dismissed me on multiple occasions, and I'm not the first guy that he's dismissed. I'm not the first guy that he's ducked. It's out there for people to see. The reason that I got the Pavlovich fight was because Ciryl [Gane] didn't want it so he ducked [Sergei] Pavlovich. He then ducked Curtis Blaydes. Curtis Blaydes has been on record saying that. I asked for him, years ago, didn't want it then. Then when I asked for him in Paris, they flew me over, we tried to make that fight. He didn't want it then. And we'll see what the UFC wants to do.”
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