UFC heavyweight contender Tom Aspinall suffered a fight-ending knee injury against fellow 265-pound bruiser Curtis Blaydes in their UFC London headliner last weekend across the pond, calling a halt to the action after just 15 seconds and sending the 29 year-old Englishman to his first loss under the UFC banner.
As of this writing, we still don’t know the extent of the damage, though Aspinall has already scheduled surgery for next week in London and will have an MRI this weekend to confirm his doctor’s suspicions. With that in mind, fans are unlikely to see Aspinall back inside the cage until some point in early 2023.
Or longer.
“Anybody who has knee problems knows that in order to have an accurate MRI scan you need to let the swelling go down,” Aspinall told his Instagram followers. “I spoke to the surgeon and we have a rough idea of what it is, but we are currently waiting for the swelling to go down. I will be having the MRI this weekend and having surgery early next week in London. Just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has reached out, obviously I’ve been offline and down in the dumps since Saturday night but hopefully we’ll get it fixed and get the surgery early next week.”
The technical knockout loss to Blaydes is unlikely to affect Aspinall’s place in the heavyweight rankings, since the British bruiser was already seated two spots behind “Razor” at No. 6. That could change after this weekend when No. 5-ranked Derrick Lewis collides with No. 11-ranked Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 277, depending on the outcome.