UFC commentator Joe Rogan isn’t a fan of how critics have gone after Tom Aspinall following his fight against Ciryl Gane.

In the main event of UFC 321, Tom Aspinall’s bout with Ciryl Gane went to a no contest after a double eye poke rendered Tom unable to continue. Despite him going on to have surgery to fix the injuries he sustained, Aspinall still received a lot of criticism from the mixed martial arts community with many believing he quit.

Of course, the extreme nature of Tom Aspinall’s injuries would have made it pretty irresponsible for him to carry on competing. Alas, that hasn’t stopped the narrative from being written, and it will likely continue as we approach their seemingly inevitable rematch.

In a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan discussed the Tom Aspinall issue with the great Rico Verhoeven.

Joe Rogan’s view on Tom Aspinall criticism

“He got a bad deal,” Rogan said. “He got really f*cked over for that fight. The way people got upset at him for stopping the fight with those eye pokes, to me that drove me crazy. What do you expect the guy to do? He’s defending the heavyweight title. He’s defending the heavyweight title. He gets poked in the eyes and he can’t f*cking see and he’s had two eye surgeries since then.”

“I just hate that fans reacted the way they reacted – and it’s the casual ones, it’s the s**theads,” Rogan said. “For me, I was like, ‘God, you’ve got give the guy some grace. He got his eye poked out.’ He literally was knuckle-deep in his eyes.

“For anyone to think that he should be fighting with one eye like that, ‘Who cares? Keep fighting,’ that’s insane. He got fouled. It’s not because of a punch, it’s not because he got kicked or an elbow, it’s a foul. So no, the fight should have been stopped the way it was and everybody should understand that. It’s not his fault. It was his opponent’s fault.” Quotes via MMA Fighting

Get ready, fight fans, because the next chapter of this story will soon be written.

Ian Shutts

A combat sports journalist specialising in MMA, Boxing and Muay Thai with a special interest in Asian combat sports.