UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi ended not with a bang, but with a wince and whimper. An accidental eye poke by Ciryl Gane rendered UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall unable to continue, and so we all got was a heaping helping of disappointment in exchange for our pay-per-view dollars.
Here are the five biggest takeaways from Saturday’s UFC 321 event:
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1. Things were going so well for Ciryl Gane … right up until he mistook Tom Aspinall’s skull for a bowling ball. Upon first glance it didn’t seem so bad. A light grazing of the eye, perhaps. Give the champ a minute to blink himself clear and the fight could resume. But upon further replay review, it became clear that Gane had poked Aspinall in both eyes, sinking knuckle-deep into one of them.
In case nobody told you, Ciryl, that’s against the rules. The foul seemed unintentional — certainly Gane had no reason to want it to end that way, since he’d bloodied Aspinall with jabs and seemed to be on his way to winning the opening round — but it was a bad foul nonetheless. A no-contest ending to a UFC heavyweight title fight is just about the least satisfying way to end the main event of a pay-per-view event. And it really is all Gane’s fault, I’m sorry to say.
If the UFC does rebook this one and he gets another crack at it — as UFC CEO Dana White has already said will happen — Gane should count himself lucky. He should also keep his fingers to himself.
Tom Aspinall of England reacts after suffering an eye poke against Ciryl Gane of France in the heavyweight championship fight at UFC 321.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
2. Aspinall is right: We have no right to boo him. Asking him to continue there is essentially asking him to give Gane a huge advantage in a fight that, honestly, Gane was already doing very well in. If you’re going to put your heavyweight title up for grabs, it would be nice to be able to see.
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But to wait around as long as Aspinall has for the chance to cement himself as the one true heavyweight champ, and then to have his first real title defense end like this? That has to hurt even worse than a digit to the cornea. It also undercuts the championship aura that had coalesced around Aspinall in a way that’s painfully unfair. He wasn’t winning that first round, but it also wasn’t over. He still had plenty of pop in him, even if he hadn’t exactly cut through Gane the way some of us expected him to.
Having the fight end due to a foul right as he was the only one with blood on his face, well, it ain’t a great look. Even if it’s not his fault.
3. Mackenzie Dern finally got her hands on a UFC title and all it took was for the real champ to leave the division. OK, so maybe that sounds harsher that I mean it to. It is true, though. Dern won a close and somewhat debatable decision over Virna Jandiroba without ever exactly putting her stamp on the fight. She squeaked by, you might say. But a win is a win, and when it comes in a fight for the vacant title, you get to call yourself a champion.
Will fans look at her that way now? I’m not so sure. It’s not like we’ve forgotten that Zhang Weili exists. It’s also not like Dern has been out here dominating everyone else. Still, it’s a feel-good moment for a fighter who’s seven years into a UFC tenure that was beginning to look like it would never rise to the level of championship gold.
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Enjoy it now, because ye know not when the master of the house cometh back to reclaim the throne.
4. Watching Umar Nurmagomedov against anyone not named Merab Dvalishvili really gives you an appreciation for how good the champ really is. Nurmagomedov was up against a guy who hadn’t lost in nearly five years and somehow managed to make it look almost easy. Mario Bautista is a good bantamweight. Still, he had no real answers for the pressure Nurmagomedov put on him. That gives us some perspective not only on Nurmagomedov, but also on the only man to beat him.
It seems clear now that Nurmagomedov deserves another shot at Dvalishvili’s title. He’s not even 30 years old yet and he’s still learning and improving. That loss in his lone title shot may have helped put some seasoning and savvy on him. It sure seems worthwhile to see if he could do better with a second try, knowing what he knows now.
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5. Is heavyweight just a wasteland outside the top couple guys? This is what I found myself asking while watching Alexander Volkov and Jailton Almeida feel their way through three uninspired rounds. Volkov got the decision, but by then it almost didn’t even feel like it mattered because the entire 15 minutes was basically a demonstration of each man’s limitations.
The only thing that was definitively proven in that bout was that even if we limit ourselves to just the people in the top five, we are still not guaranteed a good fight. Not at heavyweight. Not at this particular moment in time.
Please, someone send up a flare for Francis Ngannou and/or Jon Jones. Tell them we would like them to reconsider. Bring a whole lot of money.
