Rising UK heavyweight star Tom Aspinall will now headline the recently announced UFC London event on March 19th against Alexander Volkov.
Aspinall had originally been scheduled to fight Shamil Abdurakhimov at the event, also known as UFC Fight Night 204, but his move to the top of the card comes with a higher profile match-up against the No.5 ranked Volkov instead.
The 28-year-old has made an immediate impression in the heavyweight ranks since joining in 2020, racking up four wins in a row so far.
That’s a run that began with TKO victories over Jake Collier and Alan Badout, before submitting Andrei Arlovski and then TKO’ing Sergey Spivak.
That enabled Aspinall to rise to No.10 in the rankings and has paved the way for his biggest fight yet.
That comes in the shape of the 33-year-old Volkov, who is returning to action following a decision win over Marcin Tybura last October.
Volkov has come up just short of getting a title shot on a few occasions during his UFC run, with the latest seeing him rack up back-to-back TKO wins over Walt Harris and Alistair Overeem, only to then suffer a unanimous decision loss to Ciryl Gane last June.
Aspinall vs. Volkov will headline a UFC Fight Night 204 event whose line-up is still being filled out, but will include the Brit’s previously scheduled opponent Abdurakhimov now fighting Sergei Pavlovich instead.
