UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall questions some of the shots Ciryl Gane landed in his fight-ending sequence against Alex Pereira.
Gane (14-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) scored a second-round TKO of former two-division champion Pereira (13-4 MMA, 10-3 UFC) to claim the interim heavyweight title in Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 co-headliner at the White House in Washington DC.
Gane dropped Pereira with a jab then proceeded to swarm him with an array of elbows and punches while “Poatan” tried to grab a hold of him in survival mode. Gane was aiming for the side of Pereira’s head, but Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) believes several shots landed to the back of the head, which is illegal. Pereira made his way back up but was eventually taken out on the feet.
“They look a bit illegal,” Aspinall said of Gane’s strikes on his YouTube channel. “They look very illegal. What is going on? Dropped him with a jab. … He looked good. I have to watch that again. It looked like there was a lot of illegal elbows going on and illegal punches, but generally he looked good. He (Pereira) just didn’t really seem to get going, did he?
“He just looked like a bit stiff and reserved from the beginning. I don’t know if he was trying to feel his way into the fight or what, but he just never seemed to – he looked slow, but he’s not a particularly fast light heavyweight.”
Aspinall’s first title defense against Gane at UFC 321 this past October ended in a no contest after Gane accidentally poked him in the eyes in Round 1. Aspinall had to undergo double eye surgery but is seemingly suggesting that he’d be ready to return by September to rematch Gane in Paris.
“Paris in September? I’ll do that,” Aspinall said. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Let me know. I don’t mind. I’ll go to Paris. Let me know.”
