Preparing to fight Curtis Blaydes has not been a pleasant experience for Tom Aspinall.
Eight months after his insane 69-second knockout of Sergei Pavlovich to claim the interim heavyweight championship, Aspinall will defend his title in a massive co-main event matchup with Blaydes at UFC 304 in Manchester.
The fight will serve as a sequel to their 2022 clash, though that fight only lasted 15 seconds after Aspinall went down almost immediately due to a freak knee injury. As it stands, his loss to ‘Razor’ is the only blemish on Aspinall’s UFC career — something the Salford, England native intends to rectify this Saturday night when the two run it back live on pay-per-view.
Tom Aspinall’s UFC 304 fight camp has been ‘exhausting’
To prepare himself for the wrestle-heavy approach of his opponent, Tom Aspinall put himself through the wringer during his latest fight camp, spending the majority of it on his back and finding ways to fight out of uncomfortable positions.
“That’s probably where I spent the most of this camp is on my back with guys on top of me,” Aspinall told New York Post Sports. “It’s not been a very, Curtis Blaydes is not a very comfortable guy to train for. Do you know what I mean, you’re getting up off your back. See the way I work it is I work it with multiple training partners so I’ll be starting on bottom, I get them off, the energy that it takes to get a big guy off is, you know, you expend a lot of energy.
“Then I restart on my back with a fresh partner, like it’s exhausting man, it’s just exhausting training for this guy and I’ve done everything I can so we’ll see on Saturday how it goes” (h/t MMA News).
After seeing his three-fight win streak snap at the hands of Sergei Pavlovich in April 2022, ‘Razor’ returned to the win column in impressive fashion, scoring a shocking second-round KO of grappling wizard Jailton Almeida at UFC 299.
The victory solidified Blaydes’ spot in the heavyweight top five and set the stage for his interim title tilt with Aspinall.