Dana White has revealed that their original plan was to have UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall fight Alex Pereira at this weekend’s UFC: White House event in Washington D.C.
However, the eye-poke injuries Aspinall suffered during his first title defense against Ciryl Gane in October of last year didn’t heal in time for him to be ready to fight this weekend, and so they had to change their plans.
“100%. That would have been the fight if [Aspinall] was [healthy],” White said of Aspinall vs. Pereira during an interview on TNT Sports.
“Right now, a lot of our champions are hurt right now. So it’s kind of funky, there’s a lot of things you have to deal with when you’re making these matches, with timing and everything else going in everyone’s life, injuries. But yeah, it would have been Tom.”
In the end the UFC had to settle for an interim heavyweight title fight between Pereira and Ciryl Gane, which will serve as the co-main event on Sunday night.
Surprisingly, Aspinall hasn’t even been invited to watch the fight from cage-side at the White House this weekend, despite still holding the heavyweight belt and being the obvious choice to face the winner of Pereira vs. Gane.
That only adds fuel to the fire that there’s ongoing bad blood between Dana White and Aspinall, with the UFC CEO having been seen to be less than sensitive to the champion’s plight in the aftermath of his eye-poke ordeal, despite having had to undergo multiple surgeries in the months since then.
The situation became even more tense when boxing promoter Eddie Hearn signed a management deal with Aspinall soon after White had signed one of Hearn’s leading boxing stars Conor Benn to fight for his upstart Zuffa Boxing promotion.
That’s sparked off a power struggle between the two rival promoters, and in recent days Hearn has vowed to stop Aspinall from returning to the UFC until the star gets a lucrative new deal that’s far in excess of what he’s currently paid.
As such, just days out from the UFC Freedom 250 event there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to whether Aspinall will in fact go on to fight the winner of this weekend’s interim title fight between Pereira and Gane.
