The UFC’s newly crowned heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall finally has his first title defense booked as it’s been announced he’ll fight Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi on October 25th.
It’s been a long road to get to this point for the 32-year-old Aspinall, who became the UFC’s interim heavyweight champ back in November of 2023 with a 69 second KO finish of Sergei Pavlovich and then had to successfully defend the belt almost exactly a year ago with a 60 second KO of Curtis Blaydes.
During this time Aspinall had already made repeated attempts to try to set up a fight with heavyweight champion Jon Jones, but his rival’s reluctance to face him led to a year-long stand-off until last month when ‘Bones’ opted to vacate the belt and retire.
With Aspinall now installed as the undisputed champion the top end of the heavyweight division can get moving again at last and the 35-year-old Gane steps up as the first title challenger.
Gane is also a former interim champion who has previously had two unsuccessful attempts at winning the undisputed title, first losing to Francis Ngannou by unanimous decision in early 2022, and then suffering a first round submission loss against Jon Jones in another fight for the vacant belt in 2023.
Since then Gane has got back to winning ways with a TKO win over Sergey Spivak followed by a split-decision victory against Alexander Volkov to climb back up to the No.1 contender spot.
Aspinall vs. Gane will headline a UFC 321 card that will also include another heavyweight fight with potential title implications between Alexander Volkov vs. Jailton Almeida.
