Tom Aspinall is not planning to leave it to the judges when he takes on Curtis Blaydes at UFC 304 on July 27 in Manchester.
Aspinall will be defending his interim heavyweight title in front of his home crowd, and to ensure he is well-prepared, he is using some unusual methods. Aspinall revealed on The MMA Hour that he has been influenced by a documentary depicting the traveling community in England.
– You ever see the documentary Knuckle? Are you familiar with that? It’s a documentary about travelers, the traveling communities in the UK island, Aspinall said on The MMA Hour. And there’s a guy on there, big Joe Joyce, an old traveling legend, and big Joe Joyce reveals a few gypsy methods for getting ready for a fight. I wanted to resort back to a bit of gypsy heritage that I’ve got, so I thought, right, what I’m going to do is I’m going to make a little ring out of hay bales.
– When it gets to about 4 a.m., I get my alarm on, I go outside, do a bit shadowboxing in the hay bales — and then I do the old traveler method of dipping your knuckles in petrol for about 20 minutes as the sun’s coming up, and that hardens your knuckles. These are some of the hardest knuckles in the UFC right here right now. They’re like rocks.
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UFC 304: Tom Aspinall vs Curtis Blaydes
Even though UFC 304 will take place in England, the event is still catered for the American audience. This means that his title bout will most likely be in the early morning in Manchester. That is why Aspinall has chosen to wake up and begin his training at 4 am.
It doesn’t make too much of a difference for Aspinall, though, who believes a fighter should be able to compete regardless of the time of day.
– Look mate, if you can fight really well at 12 o’clock midnight, but you can’t fight really well at 4 a.m., you weren’t that [good] in the first place, in my opinion. There has been plenty of times that I’ve traveled across the world, fought in different time zones without even adjusting myself.
This will be the second time that Aspinall shares the octagon with Blaydes. Their first bout took place on July 23, 2022, and ended with a huge anticlimax when Aspinall hurt his knee only 15 seconds in. This will be an opportunity for him to avenge his only loss in the UFC and cement his position as the next contender for the undisputed heavyweight championship belt.
– This is this is a massive fight for me, both professionally and personally. When I got into the sport of MMA, which is quite a fair portion of my life ago now, this is why I got into it. All of this. There’s a lot of people out there trying to get to their dreams and get to their goals in life. This is the goal. This is the dream. This is it. In two weeks’ time, this is the dream — defending a UFC heavyweight title in my home city of Manchester in front of 25,000 Manchester fans…