Is Tom Aspinall eyeing a move to boxing in the future?
The UFC heavyweight champion and his coach / father Andy Aspinall have mentioned boxing more than once over the past few months … and the much bigger purses that boxing provides. Now, in a new video on his YouTube channel where he hit the gym with Tommy Fury, Aspinall shared his thoughts on what a boxing run would look like.
“I’d never be a world champ,” Aspinall said. “I wouldn’t try and be a world champion. You need to dedicate your whole life,
don’t you? I spent my whole life doing MMA now, I’m nearly 33 now. So for me to be 33 and then think that I’m gonna win a world title in boxing, it’s unrealistic.”
“I reckon I could have a couple of, like, not freak show fights, but big fights,” he continued. “Yeah, like a big name or something. I wouldn’t mind boxing an MMA fighter. You know what I mean? [Ngannou], yeah, I think that’d be good.”
Francis Ngannou managed to fight out his UFC contract and then made the move to boxing where he made somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million off Saudi fights against Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. He’s the blueprint that other UFC heavyweights follow … and the perfect opponent for someone like Tom Aspinall.
First, Aspinall would have to complete his UFC contract, which has two more fights on it.
“I mean, I’ve got fights in the UFC to do first,” he admitted.
It’s frustrating to hear so many of the UFC’s champions talk about jumping ship for boxing, but that’s going to keep happening so long as fighters can make more in one boxing match than they would after years with the UFC. It’s a pay scale problem, one the UFC refuses to fix.
Can they sweeten the pot enough to get Tom Aspinall to re-sign, or is this interview more proof that Aspinall’s days as UFC heavyweight champ are almost over?
