From visa complications to crippling back pain, Tom Aspinall had a lot going on in the lead up to his short-notice interim title fight against Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 295.
While Pavlovich was supposed to be the backup for the originally scheduled title clash between Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic, Aspinall stepped up on less than three weeks’ notice when that fight fell through. The Brit recently revealed that he couldn’t even train for most of whatever little time he had due to severe backache.
Aspinall shared footage of when his back suddenly stiffened up during training due to no apparent reason. Unable to train or even walk for a couple of days after, Aspinall revealed on "The MMA Hour” that he considered pulling out of the fight.
“I just wanted to get one good spar under my belt before we basically leave and travel to the U.S.” Aspinall said. “This was in the fourth round of sparring. Never experienced anything like it before. I just had a crazy back spasm, and my back just seized up. Nothing really even happened, and my back just stiffened up really badly. I was basically unable to work out from that point onward. It did get a little better, and luckily, my team was amazing and just shifted everything around so I could get some really good treatment. For a couple of days there, I just like, ‘S—t, what am I going to do?’”
If his troubles weren’t already enough, Aspinall also had to travel to the other end of country to London more than once to sort out his visa.
“So yeah, it was wild. It was absolutely crazy. I didn’t have a visa,” he said. “I had to do a million phones with the visa thing, the travel, and go to London a couple of times, which is the opposite side of the country from where I live. So it was absolutely crazy.”
Despite a wild two weeks, Aspinall went on to score a spectacular first-round KO win over Pavlovich at the Madison Square Garden in New York. While there was a lot of anxiety on his mind going into the fight, Aspinall wanted to find out who he really is when pushed to deep waters.
“Ultimately, this is what draws me to this sport is, I want to find out what I’m like as a person, said Aspinall, who added that his back is fine now. “What is Tom like when s—t goes south? And a lot of stuff has been going south for me in this buildup, a lot of obstacles are coming my way. But as I kept saying in the pre-fight interviews, I know one thing for sure, I’m definitely not going to win the fight by watching it on TV.”
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