Tom Aspinall’s Eye Turns Into a Medical Debate After French Doctors Call His UFC 321 Injury 'Superficial'

Was Tom Aspinall’s inability to continue fighting Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 a cop out? It was a double-eye poke, that too, in the heavyweight division. The move wasn’t intentional from Ciryl Gane, but was it bad enough for the referee to stop the fight? Well, a few doctors have given their verdict on the situation, and while Aspinall has found quite a bit of support, the popular opinion is that it may not have been as serious as the champion described. Tom Aspinall may have been aware that questions would be raised regarding his decision to stop fighting after getting poked. So, he made sure to release a video of the treatment he got for his eyes after the fight. The doctor who treated Aspinall’s eye shared his observations, which may not be music to the ears of the heavyweight champion’s fans. Let’s take a look. Was Tom Aspinall’s eye injury a ruse? Doctors explain The doctor in Abu Dhabi appeared to support referee Jason Herzog’s decision to stop the fight. But when it comes to his diagnosis, the doctor claimed that he found no serious injuries in Tom Aspinall’s eye. “Of course [it’s good that the referee stopped the fight]… But I didn’t find anything dangerous,” he said on Aspinall’s YouTube video. Meanwhile, the French MMA Federation’s Dr. Jean-Marc Sene added to what the UAE doctor said. He concluded that there were no severe lesions on the champion’s eye, and believes the injury was “superficial”, in that the impact took place on the outer part of his eye and not necessarily the inner. “The open eyelid is the cornea, the part that we are going to scratch. It hurts a lot, and it can cause problems. If we have closed eyes, closed eyelids, we will have compression lesions. With compression of the eye, we can imagine the vitreous in the eye, the retina in the back, we can imagine that we have lesions at this level. Here, of course, the fingers go in, but finally, we have the impression that it remains relatively superficial,” Dr. Sene told RMC Sport Combat.