Tom Aspinall nearly pulled out of UFC 295

14/11/2023 16:13

Newly crowned interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall revealed that he had a back injury prior to his UFC 295 knockout win over Sergei Pavlovich.  

"I can tell people now.  I basically didn't have a training camp at all.  I wasn't really in the best shape.  I got the call three or four days before I pulled my back pretty bad," Aspinall revealed during the UFC 295 Post-Fight Press Conference.  

During an appearance on The MMA Hour, Aspinall provided more details about the injury and disclosed that he nearly pulled out of the event.

"I don't want to harp in this too much.  That kind of slipped out, to be honest, in the post-fight interviews and stuff.  I didn't really want to talk about it too much.  I found out about the fight with just over two weeks left.  I realized that I don't have much time to spar.  I wanted to get one good spar under my belt before we basically leave and travel to the U.S., so I wanted to do one good spar.  This was in the fourth round of sparring.  Never experienced anything like it before.  I just had some crazy back spasm.  My back just seized up," Aspinall explained.  

"Nothing really even happened.  I just threw a couple of punches and my back just stiffened up really badly.  I was basically unable to workout at that point.  It was crazy.  It's been a crazy couple of weeks," continued Aspinall. 

Tom Aspinall admits he considered pulling out of UFC 295 after suffering a back injury during preparation 😬 #TheMMAHour

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— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) November 13, 2023

Asked if he nearly pulled out of the event, Apspinall replied, "Yes."  

"Literally a couple of days after I couldn't really move, or walk after I did it.  My back... It's actually a lot better.  I got a lot of treatment on it the last couple of weeks.  As I started getting treatment and giving it time it did get better.  Luckily my team was amazing and they just shifted everything around so that I could get some really good treatment going and stuff like that.  It just took a couple of days.  For a couple of days I was like, 'sh*t, what am I going to do?  I've accepted this massive fight.  The world knows about the fight now and I can't move."