Sean O’Malley has become the latest fighter to speak up in support of UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall after he decided he couldn’t continue his fight with Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 this past weekend after being poked in both his eyes at the same time.
“A lot of people in the MMA space talking about how, you know, ‘It’s disappointing Tom didn’t continue,’ ” O’Malley said on his YouTube channel. “You’re the heavyweight champion of the world. You just got poked in the eye very bad. You’re fighting a very dangerous kickboxer, very dangerous kickboxer. It is hard to stand in front of a human being with that level of skills and fight him with two eyes.
“Now you’re going to get illegally poked in the eye. It wasn’t a right hand. He didn’t get hit. Boom, broken orbital, eye swells up, you can’t see. That’s different” O’Malley said. “You get punched in the eye, a legal shot, your eye swells up, can’t see, you fight through that. Tom Aspinall would fight through that. He wouldn’t get punched, eye swells up and go, ‘I’m done. I can’t see.’ It’s different because he got poked in the eye. That is an illegal strike. Illegal.”
Having been poked in the eye himself, O’Malley is well aware of how traumatic it can be, and so he’s not buying into any talk that it brings Aspinall’s toughness into question.
“To question Tom’s toughness is insane,” O’Malley stated. “No one wanted that more than Tom Aspinall. He wanted to fight. He wanted to fight more than we wanted watch him fight.
“You can’t question Tom’s toughness. You just can’t. I’ve been poked in the eye before. Not in a fight but in practice. Been poked in the eye. Boom. Whoa. You can’t see. I’m done. I’m not going to continue to practice.
“You can’t see. It’s uncomfortable. It hurts. It’s scary. You don’t know if that’s going to come back. You don’t know if you’re going to able to see again. That really is a possibility. You get poked in the eye and you can’t see ever again. Let alone you’re trying to fight this guy who’s a massive, elite athlete who’s been popping you with a freaking jab. Bink, bink, bink. Now you have one eye because of an illegal strike. It’s unfortunate, but it’s like you just can’t question Tom’s on that.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to question his toughness in that moment.”
One fighter whose toughness was never questioned during his career was Matt Brown, but he too has been calling out those who have sought to question Aspinall’s decision not to continue in the fight.
“I’ve really been disgusted with that narrative that you’re talking about where everybody’s blaming Tom Aspinall,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Where did this come from? How did he do anything wrong? People saying ‘oh should have just sucked it up with one eye.’ Get the f*ck out of here. What are you talking about? We’re not in a death match. This isn’t f*cking like Street Fighter. It’s not a video game. This is a professional competition. He wants to win and give himself the best chance of winning.
“For one, I think Tom Aspinall would have continued had there been the right circumstance. Like if his life was on the line or something but he’s like ‘I can’t see out of my eye.’ He probably couldn’t see out of his other eye very well either. The one that got knuckle f*cking deep. It’s like live to fight another day. Try again. If this was anything other than this match, I don’t think it wouldn’t even be talked about that way. This particular match, the circumstances just added up where now Tom Aspinall is an easy target.”
