Tom Aspinall's wayward path to UFC spotlight: 'I’m just trying to be me'
After taking out Sergey Spivak in the first round in September — which earned him his third $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus — a humbled Tom Aspinall called out Blagoy Ivanov, who was ranked 12 at the time.
The UFC didn’t pay attention to that call-out. Instead, it put Aspinall in with No. 6 Alexander Volkov on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, ESPN+) at The O2 Arena in London, giving him a considerably tougher test.
And Aspinall, who won over so many fans after beating Spivak by showing his humility while talking about his desire to buy his family a home, thought the UFC had the best idea.
So, the hometown boy will meet Volkov in the first UFC card in the United Kingdom in three years with a lot on the line.
After Aspinall watched the Spivak bout, he agreed with the UFC’s choice to have him fight Volkov and not Ivanov. He’s become a vastly different fighter.
“Anytime you can get a win in the UFC, it’s impressive,” said Aspinall, who is 11-2 overall and 4-0 in the UFC. “But when you can get a win and not really be touched in the fight, it just really shows your level. It proves to yourself that what you’ve been doing is really working. My confidence since that fight has gone to a whole other level. I’ve always been confident anyway in my own skills, my own ability, but I feel like now my skill level is very high.”
He cringes when he speaks that way, because he’s the opposite of a loud-mouth, self-absorbed trash talker. He carries himself with humility and isn’t looking for attention or to make a name for himself with anything other than his ability.
In Las Vegas, he was caught on camera crying when he heard news that he’d won a $50,000 bonus. He said at the news conference that night he’d been saving to buy his family a home.
He took pains to point out that his emotion he showed upon learning he’d gotten a bonus was real and he’s not trying to manufacture a character.
What you see with Aspinall is what you get, and people are taking to him.
“These answers, they’re not so I come across humble or anything like that,” Aspinall told Yahoo Sports. “They’re honest answers. I’m not trying to come across any certain way. This is literally my honest answer. I see a lot of people giving these fake answers to try to come across a certain way and I don’t like that stuff. I’m just trying to be me. Some people yelled at me for tearing up on camera when I got the bonus, but I didn’t even know there was a camera there. I had no idea. It was a guy with a phone in his hand. If it was up to me, that video wouldn’t have been posted. I don’t want to be crying on camera.
“But I have bought a house for the family and we are in the house as of two months ago. It’s amazing times to be 28 years old with three children and a wife and being able to support everybody. Great times.”
Many fighters who have had success at a young — or in a lot of cases, not such a young — age wind up getting self-absorbed and many blow their fortunes not long after they get it.
If Aspinall defeats Volkov, he’ll likely be in or right near the top five of the heavyweight division and that’s where the big money will start to come. Aspinall, though, said the money, fame and attention won’t change him or see him all of a sudden develop an entourage the size of a small town in northern England.
His father will be a gatekeeper, he said, but it’s just not in Aspinall’s nature to be that way.
“[My father] is not just going to let some guy from off the street come in and start sweet-talking me and start taking all of my money,” Aspinall said. “No way. There’s absolutely no way he’s going to let anything like that happen, so I don’t even have to worry about it.”
What he does have to worry about is Volkov, an elite heavyweight whose losses have come primarily against the best of the best. BetMGM has Aspinall as a -130 favorite, with Volkov at +110.
Aspinall has much respect for Volkov, but his body of work convinced him he was ready for this opponent at this stage of his career.
“He brings so many problems,” Aspinall said. “He’s 6-foot-8 and as you just mentioned, he has so much more experience than me. I was told today that he’s got more knockouts than I have fights. He’s got a lot of knockouts. He’s got a lot of five-rounders under his belt. He’s got a lot of three-rounders under his belt, so the experience is there. He’s been fighting at a high level. He’s fought in front of large crowds. I’ve never fought in front of a full-capacity crowd before.
“On paper, it looks like it’s a mismatch in his favor. But paper doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to stepping into the Octagon and fighting. Nobody really has an idea of what I can do in the Octagon. People think they’ve got an idea, but I’ve shown minimal, the minimum of my skill set is what I’ve shown so far.”
Saturday in front of a huge throng cheering his name would be a good time for him to show those skills. And don’t be at all surprised if he does, and in a big way.
