Despite the history between Curtis Blaydes and Tom Aspinall with the way their first fight ended, having this match-up for the interim heavyweight title was not the first choice for the co-main event of UFC 304.
If the UFC was able to make it happen, Ciryl Gane was reportedly the frontrunner to face Aspinall in Manchester this Saturday.
It was later revealed that Gane was unable to fight on July 27 due to previous commitments that he had made to working on a movie.
The French fighter received criticism for this as a result but as his coach recently explained, the decision wasn’t made as choosing one or the other.
Fernand Lopez Explains Why Ciryl Gane Couldn’t Fight At UFC 304 After Scheduling Issues
In a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Gane’s coach Fernand Lopez explained how this whole process came together and why they were unable to take the interim title fight.
This movie project has been something that “Bon Gamin” was set to work on since much earlier in the year but the plans were changed once the UFC came to him and his team with the idea of fighting Sergei Pavlovich.
Lopez states that Pavlovich was unable to take the fight in March so they made an arrangement to push back the filming so that Gane could fight the Russian powerhouse at UFC 300 in April.
This meant that when the fight didn’t happen, they were unable to change the plans, hence why Gane is now reported to return in October to face Alexander Volkov after almost a full year of inactivity.
Lopez referenced how in trying to make the dates work for all parties, the UFC was in communication with Netflix to try and reschedule the movie’s filming schedule to allow for Gane to compete at UFC 304.
Unfortunately, they were unable to push the dates back even further which led to Aspinall defending the interim title in a rematch with Blaydes instead.
“When we went back with Netflix, signed the deal with Netflix, we couldn’t stop it. The UFC couldn’t stop it. Matter of fact, I give the contact of Netflix and I give the contact of the producer of the movie that was very kind, I give that contact to the UFC and try to talk with them. UFC have very good relationship with Netflix, with the global Netflix, and they was trying to reschedule thing and change thing I say okay, if you can make it to move things, to remove the movie and push it a little bit back, then we are good to go.
“We will do that, we will wait and we will do the fight and then wait for the movie and they tried with the UFC. Hunter Campbell himself call Netflix to try to push back the filming but that was too much money to spend. That was too much thing to move around and again, this is something that is not a problem. We don’t have any beef with the UFC talking about this movie.”
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