Belal Muhammad wants Tom Aspinall to ignore the commentary following UFC 321.
Like Aspinall, the former UFC welterweight champion knows what it’s like to have a fight stopped due to an eye poke. For Muhammad, his no contest due to an eye poke came in a huge spot in his career. It was his first main event, and a chance to establish himself among the elite in the division. Then everything came to a halt early in the second round when Leon Edwards’ fingers found Muhammad’s eyes.
Aspinall experienced a similar situation last weekend at UFC 321, when Ciryl Gane badly poked his eyes, causing their heavyweight title fight to come to an end at the tail end of the first round. Immediately in the octagon, Aspinall began combating the backlash for not continuing in the fight, and he has continued to do so by showing updates on his YouTube channel.
“Tom Aspinall, you’re starting to feel what I felt,” Muhammad said on his YouTube channel. “I’ve been there, bro. You get poked in the eye, it wasn’t on you, the world, the fans, they’re blaming you and word of advice, bro: stop caring.
“Stop caring what these people are saying. Stop trying to prove yourself. Because even with the proof that you’re showing, going to the doctor, showing them you’re getting your eye checked – I mean, a lot of the doctors are saying, ‘It’s nothing, it was this. You’ll be fine, go back to the States. You’ll be OK.’ It’s not really helping the case.”
Muhammad explained he doesn’t believe that Aspinall tried to find his way out of the fight, some fans online have suggested. He also doesn’t believe Aspinall was necessarily in any trouble against Gane, given there were four rounds to go, and he appeared to be flowing well, despite being blodied in the opening round. Muhammad believes it was simply a case of Aspinall not running through the opposition in a blink, as he had done to every opponent to that point.
“When you have a finger in your eye and you can’t see, and you can’t open it – after the Leon fight, I couldn’t open it for probably like 30 minutes,” Muhammad said. “It was one of the hardest things. Then people were like, ‘Oh man, you cried, you did this, you did that.’ It was not moreso about pain in the eye or anything like that.
“I’ve had eye surgeries. I thought it was over with. When you have an eye surgery, the doctors will say, ‘Ah, don’t go back to the sport. Don’t do this. Stay away from it.’ So, for me, it was losing an opportunity. For my first main event, fighting No. 3 in the world, and it ended like that.”
Muhammad faced plenty of backlash for not continuing against Edwards. However, he was able to rebound from it and rattle off five straight wins in order to get another fight against him with much higher stakes, the welterweight title. Muhammad clearly won on the scorecards to silence most of his critics. He hopes Aspinall, as the current titleholder, can do the same in the near future.
“Tom, you just gotta stop caring,” Muhammad said. “Stop caring what they’re thinking, stop caring what they’re saying, just embrace the boos. It’s gonna happen now, bro. Welcome. I open up the door for you, bro. Come chill with me. We’ll sit over here, we’ll take these boos, but we’re gonna win. Same way I used it as fuel, you use that as fuel.
“Next time you go in there with Ciryl, you felt his speed, you felt his power, now you gotta make him pay for everything you’re going through now.”
