Tom Aspinall receives support from Francis Ngannou over UFC 321 eye poke controversy

UFC heavyweight champon Tom Aspinall has received supporting words from Francis Ngannou regarding the controversial ending to his UFC 321 fight against Ciryl Gane.

In the main event of UFC 321, Tom Aspinall suffered a double eye poke that led to him being unable to continue against Ciryl Gane. In the aftermath of the result, many fighters actually came out and criticized the Englishman for not being able to continue – whereas many others sympathized with the fact that Tom was clearly in quite a lot of pain and discomfort, especially after Gane had already been warned multiple times about eye pokes.

Jon Jones was one of the people who came out against Tom Aspinall which, given the fact that he didn’t want to fight him for over a year, isn’t all too surprising.

Francis Ngannou, however, has shown sympathy for Tom Aspinall and the situation he was faced with, as he discussed during a recent interview with TMZ Sports.

Francis Ngannou backs Tom Aspinall over eye poke

“I think that eye poke made a lot of news, more than the fight itself,” Ngannou joked. “More than the announcement of the fight for sure. It was a very controversial feeling and I understand that there was a lot of frustration on the fan side that were so excited to see the outcome.

“But that was definitely an eye poke and it compromised vision from Tom. So I think the normal decision in that position is not to fight because an eye poke is not like you get kicked in the balls and you can recover and come back.

“It’s not like a pain, you are compromising your vision. And if you are doing a combat sport with compromised vision it is not good at all. Then if you still can’t see anything what if your vision is [permanently] compromised?

“Then if you keep going and maybe because of that you lose the fight, the same people will be saying how stupid you were. You should have stopped, blah, blah, blah. I see their frustration but there was an eye poke that did cause damage and affected vision.”

Quotes via Bloody Elbow