BTG 162 - Is Tom Aspinall Cursed?

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. On today's episode, we'll talk a little bit about the UFC that just passed between Tom Aspenol and Sirill Gan. Uh, spoilers are going to be abound, but I'm sure everybody has probably heard it by now. And what a anticlimatic finish uh for that fight. It seems like Aspenol is cursed by the fight gods for whatever reason. And uh first round towards the endish of that round, Sirrogon pokes well actually he did it twice. At one point he reaches out. It looked like he might have been going for a jab or just like for a stiff arm seral and Tom level changed his shoot and he just jams his fingers right into the eyes. But that eye gou just didn't seem to get him. But then moments later he just pumps out another stiff arm right into the eyes. And not just one eye, both eyes. And you could see in the slow-mo, not only did he hit, he then drove into it and pretty gnarly eye gouge. Tom had to recoil. Then the referee intervened. Everybody saw the slow-mo camera. They're like, "Oh crap." And then Tom was pretty quick in saying, "He's done." And uh said he couldn't open his eye. and uh mixed takes. It is surprising to me. One side saw well obviously clear eye gouge and it was a really bad eye gouge because you could see like on one of the fingers it went almost knuckle deep like right into the middle knuckle you know going in there. Uh, so it was a pretty severe eye gouch, a double eye gouge, mind you. Uh, he got both eyes, you know, like the Three Stooges style. Okay, so pretty bad. And they felt it was warranted. People who were more extreme felt like in fact that should have been a DQ, not just a no contest. The other side said Tom is playing it up and uh, he didn't want to fight. He took the easy way out. And they're they're claiming his eyes were closed so the eye gouch doesn't even hurt, which is one of the more [ __ ] things I have read online, which is saying a lot. And then you had like the commentators, I think it was Bisping and Chaos Simon come on and say that Tom as a champion is supposed to tough through it and keep fighting. What? No. Again, in in my opinion, horrible take. If you get fouled to a point where you can't see straight, you're not supposed to quote unquote tough it out. Right? This is not gladiator combat, right? And there are rules. This guy Sirill broke the rules. If anyone's going to have to tough it out, it's going to be Sirill, not Tom. It's such a backwards mentality to think that, oh, if you get fouled, just keep fighting anyways, even when the ref catches it and gives you the rest time. No, ignore it. Just go fight and get your ass kicked because you've been hurt. And like people will understand. They won't. They forget. Look at Jon Jones. He's I gouged so many freaking people. No one really remembers it. And I could tell you eye gouging, even if your eyes closed, it still messes you up, right? You might not get scratched in the eye, but the eyeball physically being pushed into the back. Remember, your skull is there, so it gets jammed into your skull. And guess what? Your eye doesn't like being squished. Okay? Uh, and it's very sensitive. I I know I've talked about this before. It seems like it's like every other week or so now there's some weird foul going on that I have to address, but uh this is all the news. So, I guess it's worth revisiting. when the worst eye gouge I've seen personally was with George Massall training with my brother Marcos and George shot in on the double leg and my brother had his hand by his hip and his thumb was kind of sticking out like this and George's head unfortunately just went right there and my brother said he felt his thumb go all the way in the skull and I was watching from a distance so I didn't really appreciate that I just saw George collapse and started convulsing like he was going into a seizure and my brother was just looking at his thumb freaking out. I mean, they're both young. My George must have been like 18, 19, and my brother like 23 or 24, you know, and I didn't understand like what the hell happened. My brother's like, "My thumb went in his eye." I was like, "What?" And George started throwing up, you know, and I'm like, "What the hell is going on?" The pain was so bad for George. And you guys know Master, he's not, for lack of a better word, he's not a [ __ ] right? He's a tough guy. And he was completely out. I said, throwing up, spasming, rolling on the ground. Uh I've never seen him like that since then. Right. Uh so he was completely out of the picture there. And mind you, at the end of the day, I think it was just a scratched cornea. Like he didn't need surgery or anything, but that was just a really bad eye gouge, right? I don't know what Tom had. And I can't say, oh, it was just as bad or worse. I don't think it was as bad, obviously, because he wasn't on the ground throwing up. But everybody deals with, you know, pain differently. And the the fact of the matter is if you're fighting a world-class kickboxer and you can't see, it's a big problem, right? And that was his claim at least that he couldn't use the eye. And if that happens, yeah, man, you're you're done. And as the especially as the champion, like what risk? Why why are you taking this risk to fight when you can't see when your opponent has all the advantages? doesn't make sense. Then there are other people say, "Oh, Sirill was dominating the fight." Well, optically, pun intended, yeah, he bloodied Tom's nose with the jabs, and so he had blood all over his face, so it looked like, oh, he was getting batter, but if you look at the punch stats, it's pretty even. I think Ser was leading by three strikes and Tom landed more head strikes. you know, servo is landing a lot more body and leg kicks. So, I mean, it's like and it's the first round, dude, of a five rounder fight. So, I don't know. Doesn't seem to me like I would chicken out of a fight just with a gosh. It's not impossible. I'm just saying I don't think that's probable. I think more likely he got eye gods pretty bad and didn't want to have to fight with the penalty of not being able to see against a guy who's predominantly a striker. And if you want to be mad at somebody for this, be mad at Sirill. He fouled not once but twice. He didn't get caught in the first one, but moments later he got caught in the second one. And there's no reason to be doing this. This is not a good way to defend yourself from fighting. This is understandable, right? This is not like what are you doing here? I'm not posting on you cuz well, I'm going to post with my fingertips. No, you're supposed to be posting if I'm checking somebody on the shoulder to stop a shot with the base of my palm. Now, sometimes this happens, right? But this was coming out this way. To me, that's an intentional foul, right? This is intentional. This accidental. And usually like this, you're probably not getting a severe foul because if the fingers did curve a little bit and you jammed in, most of the force is here, right? If you imagine I'm checking someone on their shoulder, most of the force is on the shoulder and then you got a little bit of fingertip. You can see with Sirill it was this. So guess what? All the force is going on the fingertips and that's why he was able to penetrate into the eyeball, right? If it was here, there would have been just like a scratch. This drove in. So like he's pushing the eyes in. From personal experience, I can tell you when your eyeball gets driven deeper into the eye socket, not great. You guys heard my story about scuba diving and I was blind in the water for a couple minutes. That's what happened. Different mechanism. It was a mass squeeze. It was pressure vacuum actually sucking my eyeball in. But, uh, it shut off my eyes. Right? If your eyeball is getting pushed back in, guess what? It's going to have a similar effect. Uh, so it's going to damage your vision. Now, we can argue I in my opinion if the hands out horizontal like this, intentional foul. This you can make the case accidental foul, especially if there was a reason like the guy was shooting in. Okay, boom. I'm trying to post on his shoulder or post on his forehead, whatever. And maybe you missed and then your fingers hooked a little bit to the eye. But when they're coming out like this, that's cheating, dude. That's a intentional foul. And you guys, it was maybe a couple weeks ago, I talked about what my scoring system would be for fouls. And I think I did it online as well. And I'll I'll recap it really fast. Intentional foul that harms the opponent, disqualification. Intentional foul that doesn't harm the opponent, minus point. Unintentional foul that harms the opponent, minus point for the first two times. Third time, DQ. Unintentional foul that harms an opponent that's unable to continue, DQ. And unintentional foul that doesn't harm the opponent, warning. Very simple. So, in this case, to me, I could see the case for a DQ in this because it's Sirill's actions that cause this foul. You're responsible for your weapons, right? If I'm walking around with a gun and I accidentally shoot somebody, I'm like, "Oh, it was an accident. I didn't mean to." Like, "No, I'm still going to go to jail." Right? It's the same thing with fighting. You are responsible for how you use your weapons. If I am careless with how I use my weapons, I'm gonna have to suffer the consequences of what the repercussions of the foul are. So, this covering up for Sirill is crazy to me. Like, no, he clearly fouled twice, got caught in the second one. It's on him. And there should to me aspenol has no blame in this. Now you the case could be made like okay Tom wasn't really hurt and he just took the easy way out. Let's suppose that's true. Whose fault is this still? Sirill. Because he started with a foul. He gave his opponent the opportunity to make an excuse. If you don't want them to use the easy way out, don't foul them. It's very simple. I saw a fighter who's been in the game for a long time, Jim Miller, had the same take I did, which I'm like, "Oh, genius." Right? Yeah. Like these fouls are not intent or they're they're intentional. And like I agree and the only way you solve this is with harsh punishments. And he was also saying monetary punishments. I agree. You got to hit him where it hurts. However, let's I don't want to go too much into know the fing thing because I've done this before, but that's my thoughts on this particular take, right? Like even if Tom, you know, played it up for the camera just to get out of the fight and get it. You know, mind you, he's not getting a win bonus. It's a no contest. All right, so this is the other thing. People, oh, he wanted an easy win. Like, no, it's not a win. It's it's show money. He was getting it either way. So like this is probably the worst well second worst possible outcome. Worst outcome would be losing the fight. Second worst outcome is like getting a draw where he got penalized uh or he got fouled rather. And mind you Dana White also seems to be blaming him for it. Dana White's like, "Oh, Tom wanted out of that fight. Sir was looking great. People underestimated Sel." And then like, "Oh," they asked him, "Are you going to make the rematch?" He goes, "Oh, what a pain in the ass, but yes, I will." you know, so it's very obvious to see where Dana's favorites are and it's not Tom. I don't know what Tom did to him that really pissed him off. It seems like he hasn't liked them since ever. And uh it's not going well in that relationship. Tom has also hinted that he wants to the the dad at least says that he doesn't want to fight MMA anymore. He wants to get into boxing because there's bigger money in boxing. and seeing the type of treatment Tom's getting in this, I can understand that. Although, I'm not sure how well that would work out for him, you know? Uh I mean, Neano made a splash, but when with the fight he had against the Gypsy King, but afterwards he hasn't I mean, he had one fight that he didn't go his way and he hasn't fought boxing since. Now, he might have had a big enough payday where he didn't need to. Again, I don't know his particulars, but for a young guy like Tom who wants to be active, I don't know how switching to boxing is going to be the payout he's looking for. I think he needs a bit more fame in MMA to make it a big deal. Unfortunately for him, this was not the way to do it. if he would have won this fight like devastating fashion, then he would have a chance to have that appeal like, "Hey, look, you know, I'm a killer in MMA. I'm the best heavyweight in the planet. Now I can jump in and take out the boxing heavyweights, too." But going out to a no contest like this, it leaves a lot of questions. So, you remember I was saying I think the last podcast this is going to or not I think on the news post this fight's going to answer a lot of questions about aspanol like it didn't answer any questions about it. We still have questions. That's why what an unsatisfying fight. Oh, terrible. Uh there's some other interesting fights. McKenzie Dur Va I don't know how to say Nasovva had a fight and McKenzie Dur wins the fight and I I I didn't see this fight but apparently she won it off her back because she was doing a lot more ground and pound and um she was also on top when she was on her feet without striking Verna. So, she becomes uh the featherweight women's champion. That's nice. Good win for the jiu-jitsu community, right? Uh Mackenzie Dur has been a staple in BJJ for a long time. You know, Moon Champion and all that, ACC champion. So, another championship to add to Mackenzie Duran. I'm sure the UFC marketing department is also very pleased with this. No offense to Verna, but she is uh a little rough uh on the looks department, right? Not that that should matter for fighting, but it does. Mackenzie Dur not as rough. Uh, so I'm sure they were happy with that result. But if Wheelie ever goes back into that division, it seems like Zang would have a much easier path to get that belt back based off these fights. the UFC heavyweight division not only had that fight, they also had uh Volkov with uh Jelton. And that's a fight that I thought would have been a little more interesting and also a fight that was not, at least from what I what I've read, it looked like Gelatin was getting lots of takedowns, but then just doing nothing with them. and Volkov was actually ground and pounding him off his back and ended up winning a split decision off his back, which on one hand seems silly, but on the other hand, if you are the one doing the damage, that makes sense, right? I hate it when somebody just scores takedowns and holds people to the ground and the other guy is throwing little strikes and elbows and the guy in the back loses. It's like unless your takedown was a giant slam, the takedown doesn't really mean too much in MMA, right? Especially if you're taking someone down who doesn't mind being on their back because they know they can work you, which Volkoff did. Apparently, at one point, Hilton stood up because he was taking too much damage from Volkov off his back, which is nuts. So strange again, heavyweight division not looking too great in this one. And then there was another fight earlier on that didn't work out well either. So like uh yeah, the UFC heavyweight division is probably in some of the worst straits has ever been uh from at least from watching this UFC. Now, there was also a grappling event uh I forgot about. It was a who's number one eightman absolute bracket. Had some solid names in there. The ones that I can remember very clearly. You had Dante Leon, you had Philipe Costa, you had Declan Moody, you had Ryan Aken. I'll go with those four because I know those four were the semi-finalist. They all won their first matches um pretty easily. Uh Dante got a rear naked choke finish and uh what's his name? Declan got a Dar choke in the semis. Dante went against Costa and was able to win a decision. And Declan went against Akin, who is uh pretty dominated. Declan's passing, like I've covered before, is really solid. He puts a lot of pressure and he was able to avoid the leg attacks of Aken and and get to dominant positions. Wasn't able to really get any good bites on the finish. uh not that I can recall at least there wasn't any clear subs that ever came his way but just enough to get uh Aken pretty defensive and he wanted a very dominant decision. So then you had your finals which was the biggest weight disparity Dante Leon which I think was 178 and Declan Moody which I believe said was 222 which I thought he was heavier because he looks like he's a big dude. 222 is not that big. Uh they had an interesting match. If I remember correctly, I believe Declan got on um I think Dante pulled guard. Declan worked on top. Uh and it was mostly fighting off of Dante Leon's guard. Declan never passed. And I don't know, on one hand, I felt Dante was a lot busier in going for things where Dean was trying to wear out the guard like he did to Ryan and to others, which was very effective against the heavyweights, but it didn't seem to wear out Dante at all. Dante seemed to be just fine absorbing the pressure passing and not getting broken by it. But in the end, Declan was on top the entire time, was putting a lot of pressure on him, and he got the decision win. Yeah. I mean, yes, optically you're on top of the guy the whole time. I guess you you would win in a grappling match. On the other hand, I don't know. Like if I'm the bottom guy and I'm going for leg locks, I'm trying to take the back. It feels like I'm doing what a little guy would be expected to do against a big guy. Either way, not like a dominant victory to me. It's like kind of a coin toss. I could see it going either way, honestly. So, it wasn't a robbery or anything like that, but a win's a win, you know, especially when it's for a title and it's for money in a tournament. So, like Declan should be happy. Dante is a tough competitor even though he was very undized. Uh still not easy to get by. So kudos to him for that win. He I believe now um who did he call out? God it was a good name that he did call out for the next match. So it'll come to me later. But yeah, that was for for grappling action. Then there was a local MMA card here in Vegas, Tough Enough, and had uh a few guys I knew fighting on it. But the most notable fight was Hinata Konuto going to his second pro MMA fight. He won his first fight by TKO in a very shoot the box style. Basically, the guy tried to take him down. I don't know why. trying to take down a jiu-jitsu ace, but then Kuto sprawled at him and then soccer kicked him into a TKO like from a turtle. So, he was just soccer kicking in the ribs. It was the craziest thing. This fight he does it again. Same finish, but this time he took the guy down rather than the guy trying to take him down. And once he took him down, he was just throwing bomb hooks and forcing this guy to cover up to some knees to the ribs. The guy tried to get up. He matt returned him hard and then kneed him, punched him a few times, stood up and soccer kicked him twice before the guy just stopped and the referee jumped in. And it was like amazing. Another It looked like a replay of the first fight. 47 seconds. Really, really quick fight. And uh Hinato is showing a real mean streak in MMA and I love it. Uh not enough people brutalize the turtle position that way. Mind you, I'm someone who likes playing turtle and jiu-jitsu, but you have to know the difference between jiu-jitsu and MMA. In jiu-jitsu, you can be effective off turtle and it could be a good defensive strategy. And like I said, sometimes it's a good attack strategy for me just because people underestimate it. But once you can throw knees and elbows and punches, it really changes the dynamic a bit. Now, mind you, I still play that game, but I'm trying to stand up now. And the one thing I know is the moment you start cranking up a punch, that means you let go of your hands, now I can stand up, you know, and I can look for that hand, you know, and do like inside stand up type deal. or you start throwing a knee, you've created space, you know, I can u sit out or come up to my feet or whatever, but you can't just stay on your force, you know. Um, but this poor kid was just getting roughoused, you know, was just throwing him around everywhere. A great second win for him. Uh, the next fight he should probably up the challenge level. I mean, I know, you know, they're building him up. He's still a young guy though. I didn't realize he's 29. So, but at the same time, he needs to get that experience relatively quickly if he wants to make a UFC run at some point, right? So, he probably wants to get five fights in the next year or two. so that he's like early 30s, got, you know, somewhere around 8 to 12 fights and is ready to make his entrance into the UFC. And like I told you guys before, a lot of people try to rush in there. It's like, no, don't race into the UFC. It'll chew you in and spit you out. And uh I was actually talking to somebody and they gave me the analogy their coach gave them. I'm like, "Oh, that's actually a great way of saying it." And I believe it it was he said uh Casey Housstead said this. Casey Hustad's the head coach at 10th Planet Vegas. Good guy. Great uh analogy. And he says, "Imagine that you have a job that you have to change the light bulb in a tower." And you guys probably seen them before. This is a real job. It's a tower that's just so high. We're talking about hundreds or hundreds of feet that it might take you an hour to scale and you have to use a ladder and you have this big old light bulb that you got to change. Now, it's going to take you a long time to climb up that tower and you just you're like, you know what? I'm just going to run it. I'm going to gun this thing. And you come all the way up really fast. And then in your rush to get to the top, you realize you forgot the tools you needed to install the flashlight. Now, guess what's going to happen? Not only are you going to have to come down, you have to come up again and then come down again, right? So, you've just created a lot of work for yourself. Whereas, if you would have stayed on the ground a little bit longer to make sure you have all your tools you needed before you made that climb, your climb would have only had to been made once and you would have been able to get the job done in the first try. I couldn't think of a better analogy for making your entrance into the final stages of your championship path, right? because it's hard to get all those tools under your belt going for a UFC or a title run because the UFC can be very demanding on the schedule that you have once you're in there. They want you to fight, you know, and if you say no to a fight, they might cut you right there. Like they don't give a [ __ ] about you. Let's be clear, right? Uh, so you want to be sure that once I'm in the UFC, like I'm at 85 to 90% of my skill level that I'll ever get. So, I'm going to get better, especially through the fight experiences of fighting other really tough guys, and I'll be learning things at the gym, but they're not going to be monumental shifts of my game, right? like they're going to be incremental percentages like okay I got 0.5% better you know versus when you're young in your career and you might be very athletic and natural so like but you're making big jumps every year like if you're making like 10% shifts in skill level every year like you shouldn't be getting in the UFC yet you're still evolving a lot once you're getting down to like 1% or maybe one and a half% skill level changes. Okay, now you're getting towards the end game, right? Like you're you've accumulated lots of skills at this point, I would hope, and now you're ready to put it all together and jump into that final path because you want to, in my opinion, if I'm putting someone in the UFC, it's because they're ready to take a title, right? they're ready to start that path, which is probably going to be somewhere between five to 10 fights depending on how those fights go, right? Again, if you fought five fights and you just crushed people and you know, the UFC usually puts you with a really tough fight from the get-go. So, that kind of sets the pace of where you're going to be, right? because they'll they'll set you up with a gatekeeper and if the gatekeeper demolish demolishes you, chances are you might get one more and then you're done. But if you beat the gatekeeper, it's like, "Oh, he's actually did better than what we would expect." And now you'll get another guy who's another gatekeeper. And at that point, if you crush that guy, okay, he could fight a ranked guy now. maybe a top 15 guy or 15 to 10. And if you get to that guy, now you're starting now you're on the path, right? Like once you can start fighting ranked opponents, you're now on your way to title contention, depending on how you're doing. My point being, you want to make sure that you already have all the skills you need to be able to beat anybody in the UFC. That doesn't mean you can beat anyone in the UFC, but you should have the skills already. I think a lot of it is going to be just the competition experience and especially your first couple or at least that first fight you had to get those quotequote UFC jitters which is just jitters of a big event right you have arrived like if I'm going to the Olympics the first Olympics I'm sure it's probably the toughest one because it's such a monumental production and the meaning behind it and all that but I'm sure after the first Olympics now it's like okay every other Olympics is a little bit easier to get through now because I know how this works. So that would be my advice for someone like Hanato who's who's youngish, right? He's 29. He's got two pro fights, two dominant TKO victories, hasn't sustained any damage. That's great. You know, he can rack up like five to eight more wins that way. But like the opponent level has to escalate a little bit. He's obviously way better than these guys. So, but you know, it's a tricky balance, right? You don't want to throw a guy, even someone as good as him, someone who's too tough early. Like, you got to build them up. So, we got to layer the opponent difficulty so that he gets little by little the experience that he needs. You like for me, I would want to see him fight somebody who could wrestle a little bit because that's going to challenge the wrestling a bit more. It's also a challenge to striking a bit more because he's had it really easy as far as taking people down and he's so strong off the ground and not only like he hasn't even shown his jiu-jitsu game yet which is which is awesome. He's been able to really focus in on the striking and the ground and pound aspect and he clearly has a good instinct for ground and pound better than a lot of people I've seen to be honest have been fighting longer. Like the way he's working people from the turtle, like I said, is old school shoot box style. It's awesome. And not enough people do that kning or soccer kicking the the ribs like or just even punching the ribs. People forget, man, if you get the floating rib, that guy's going to be done. It's going to be a really hard comeback because once you pop a floating rib, everything hurts. Breathing hurts, you know, moving around hurts. You're going to really I mean It's going to be something special to come back from that. Especially when you're in the turtle and the guy, you know, bust your rib. It's like you're not in a great place to get a comeback now, right? Like you're already at the bottom of the hole and it's going to be hard. So, like I love what he's doing with that. So, uh, and he hasn't really need to use his jiu-jitsu yet. He's just been using good wrestling and granapal. So, I'm hopeful for him and I hope he can continue to move up the ladder. It'll be interesting to see because that style is very exciting and especially once someone's able to wrestle with him a little bit, we might see some of the jiu-jitsu come in which is going to be another work of art there because his jiu-jitsu is amazing. So, uh, especially in the context of an MMA environment, his jiu-jitsu is going to be levels above anybody that he's ever going to fight. So, uh, a lot of potential for him. Again, as long as, uh, the striking holds up. He's got good wrestling. He's shown he has adapted his wrestling into MMA already. So, that's excellent. We just got to make sure that his career is structured right that he gets into the good time. Like I said, like early 30s run would probably be the way to do it for him. Like a 32 or or Yeah, I would think that 31 32 like two years if he can get enough experience under his belt. uh assuming the schedule and the the body allows it, that will give them time in the UFC because you know in the UFC getting lots of fights in is not as easy and usually there's a lot more recovery time when the fights are tough and they usually are tough. Uh so even if you're a busy schedule, three fights a year, like I said, it might take you three years. So you rather be under 35 than over 35. Uh but yeah, hopefully he can pull it off. And uh yeah, that's all about I have for you guys today. Not a lot in to cover for me. I as far as personally training, uh I've been able to come back from vacation and resume my schedule and that's always good. You know, I I did take about like 10 11 days off without really doing any training. So, I was wondering is the cardio is going to suffer? Is anything else going to I'm not going to be able to do it? And no, I did fine. Uh had like a two and a two hour plus practice with Strickland and his group at the UFCI on on a Wednesday, which was surprisingly not that difficult for me. Although afterwards I felt like exhausted. I just felt the not exhausted because my energy is always fine. It's just my body was wrecked. I was a lot more sore than I expected I would be. It's one of the few times that I took an Advil just because I'm like I felt pain signals going on all over the place. And when I feel like that like a couple Advil usually help bring that level down to like a manageable level. But then I trained on Friday and Saturday and got six rounds each of those days. Did fine. So, um yeah, I was able to maintain output uh despite having a little bit of a hiatus. But, uh you know, like I always say, you have to play by ear. You got to listen to the body, you know, uh as you train. But that's it. I won't man meander too long. I'll let you guys go and I'll catch you all next