Michael Bisping has given a lot of support to UFC champion Tom Aspinall through the British heavyweight’s long eye injury saga. But event “The Count” is starting to question the validity of Aspinall’s injury seven months after the fact.
Aspinall was double-eye poked by Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 and hasn’t been able to compete since. It took him a long time to even be able to shake someone’s hand without missing or drive a car. ‘Light training’ is as close as Aspinall has gotten to a fight following multiple
eye surgeries.
Bisping knows a few things about eye injuries. He suffered a detached retina in a fight with Vitor Belfort and eventually lost the eye. Having to wear a glass prosthetic will give you an intimate opinion on how seriously eye injuries should be taken, but now “The Count” wonders whether there isn’t something else going on.
“He just said he’s still not cleared to fight, but he’s been very vague with the details,” Bisping said. “He’s got a YouTube channel, he posts content all the time. You talk about it, you know, the procedures that he had, the operations, whatever they were.”
“I had a surgery,” he continued. “It was a very, very serious surgery. It’s called a scleral buckle, look it up. It’s gross what they do to the eyeball. I don’t know what he had, but he hasn’t talked about that. I had that surgery, recovered, came back and had a fight in a shorter amount of time than what it’s taking for this whole eye poke saga.”
“I know Tom, we used to have a close relationship,” Bisping concluded. “We don’t talk these days. He’s a great guy. But I don’t know. You look between the lines. There’s something f–king weird going on. That’s what it looks like. That’s what it sounds like.”
For now Aspinall says he’s still waiting to get doctor’s clearance, and then he’ll face the winner of the Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane fight at the White House on June 14th. Unless, that is, Bisping is right and there’s something sneakier going on in the background. And who knows, with UFC CEO Dana White’s rival Eddie Hearn managing Aspinall, maybe there is.
