Tom Aspinall vs Ciryl Gane: Michael Bisping defends champion against Jon Jones’ criticism

UFC commentator Michael Bisping has questioned some of the points made by Jon Jones when criticizing Tom Aspinall after UFC 321.

In the main event of UFC 321, Tom Aspinall was unable to continue against Ciryl Gane as a result of a double eye poke that rendered him unable to see. While some fighters and fans have questioned the Englishman for his inability to keep fighting, many have also been defending him, especially if they have been through a similar experience in a fight.

Recently, Jon Jones, who ducked Tom Aspinall for over a year, gave his thoughts on the incident, suggesting that Tom is prone to giving up pretty quickly.

In a recent video, Michael Bisping gave his response to that theory.

Michael Bisping responds to Jon Jones’ Tom Aspinall criticism

“We knew a few days after the fight with Ciryl Gane that he still couldn’t see,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “To say the man’s a quitter, it’s not really fair. Then he talked about the Curtis Blaydes fight. He said, ‘Oh, but with Curtis Blaydes, he didn’t even try to continue. 

“He just went straight to lying on the floor and clutching his leg and howling in agony.’ … To say that he didn’t try to fight through it, it’s not how these things work. You throw a kick, something happens in your knee, something breaks, something tears – just because the guy didn’t continue fighting doesn’t make him a quitter. The man was in a tremendous amount of pain. It was done. It was over.

Then of course Jon Jones points to another early loss in Tom’s career going back to June 2015 and he got submitted via a heel hook. If you watch the video, yes, he tapped pretty quickly. He was caught in a heel hook. 

“When you’re caught in a heel hook, you’ve got two choices: If the heel hook is in and it’s proper, you’ve got to tap, otherwise they’re going to blow out all the ligaments in your knee, and there’s a good possibility that you never fight again, you’re certainly going to be walking funny, you’re going to have surgery, you’re going to be out for a year, and you may never fight again. Do you call that being a quitter or do you call that being smart?”

Quotes via MMA Junkie