It’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Aljamain Sterling knows, but he wonders how compromised Tom Aspinall really was at UFC 321.
Aspinall’s heavyweight title fight vs. Ciryl Gane (13-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) on Saturday was ruled a no contest after Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) suffered an eye poke in Round 1 and was unable to continue. Aspinall was poked in both of his eyes after Gane extended his hands and fingers during an exchange.
“Was he milking it? Was he using his best Aljamain Sterling acting attributes to take on the gold?” Sterling said on his YouTube channel.
Sterling’s comments are curious considering he claimed the UFC bantamweight title from Petr Yan after he was illegally kneed in the head and couldn’t continue – in a fight he was losing. That being said, Sterling thinks the whole situation is a bad look for Aspinall.
“I know y’all think I’m going to be on the side of Tommy, but I’m not,” Sterling said. “I’m not in the sense that he posted after the fight his eye, and we got to see the damage, and apparently from what was posted, it looks like everything is OK. I have so many questions. He got double zoinked, I get it. But the one that got zoinked the worst, where it looked like the middle finger went in a little bit further, he wasn’t even complaining about that eye.
“He was complaining about the other one, which looked to me, on camera, the right eyeball. So, I’m thinking, ‘OK, give him some time, he’s going to recover, and the fight continues.’ The reason why I think this does not look good is Tom Aspinall was losing that fight.”
Sterling explains that he took issue with Aspinall jumping to conclusions before taking the full 5 minutes to try and recover. He says only Aspinall knows how compromised his vision was, but he wanted to see him fully utilize the 5 minutes before deciding that he can’t continue.
“Right away, the guy is saying ‘I can’t see.’ Tommy really, really f*cked up,” Sterling said “You can’t say I can’t see. We know those are the nail in the coffin to any fight. You go, ‘I can’t see,’ the ref stops the fight. The doctor comes in, they look at you, they stop the fight. You can’t say that. So if you actually want your 5 minutes to try to recover and stay in the fight, you can’t use those words. The ref came over multiple times and was asking him, giving him other chances, ‘Hey, I’m giving you time,’ and he’s just like, ‘I can’t see.’
“Just say, ‘OK, let me take my time to see if things get better.’ If guys want to compete, that’s what they say. I got illegally kneed, blasted in the head, and I got destroyed on social media for a year and a half. … Watching the fight, there’s something to be said that the fight looked like it was starting to get tough. And for those things, it makes me question it. Do I question Tom’s integrity? But I think it makes me question did that hurt as much as you said it did?”
