It’s been 15 months since Tom Aspinall won the interim heavyweight title, which is an eternity for a fighter of his ilk in his prime. That all changes on Saturday when he faces the Frenchman Ciryl Gane at UFC 321, who will see if he can be the first to properly beat Big Tom.
Can Gane get the fight into the championship rounds, where all the great unknowns of Aspinall’s cardio and chin may lie? Does Mackenzie Dern do what the UFC has been trying to set her up to do for all these years, which is win a title? And is Umar Nurmagomedov back in a big way, or is he about to be derailed by Mario Bautista in the friendly confines of Abu Dhabi?
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We are here to ask the burning questions for Saturday’s pay-per-view, so let’s get rolling.
Tom Aspinall of England and Ciryl Gane of France face off during the UFC 321 ceremonial weigh-ins.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
1. If Tom Aspinall defends his heavyweight title, will people stand behind him as the undisputed champion? Or will he carry an asterisk?
Petesy: The people didn’t seem to mind all that much when Francis Ngannou left town and shortly thereafter we were watching Jon Jones hand the ghost of Stipe Miocic his ass. Sure, in a perfect world Aspinall would be fighting Jones for his title, but Jones wouldn’t allow that to happen. If anything, it’s on the UFC to get him that verification. Whether that’s through Jones or Ngannou when his contract with PFL runs out, it’s on the UFC to make it happen. If there is an asterisk, it’s got nothing to do with Aspinall turning down fights or picking easy opponents.
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Chuck: Exactly right, Petesy — and might I add, well said. I knew you’d defend your boy Aspinall the right way, and I hope that one day you guys can have another beer sesh and laugh about these days when he had to fight so hard just to build a legacy.
In my mind, there’s no asterisk whatsoever. No he didn’t beat Jones to get the title, but as you laid out, that was no fault of his own. It was torture to watch the guy twist in the wind while Jones rode around on a scooter in Vietnam pretending Tom wasn’t worth his while. I think this fight will be a big coronation for Aspinall, and he’ll flick that asterisk over to Jones to deal with.
Is Jon Jones coming back to the title picture in 2026?
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
2. Will calls for a Aspinall vs. Jon Jones fight grow louder if Tom prevails? And how absurd would it be if Jones discounts Aspinall’s achievements if he is undefeated against the top four of the division?
Chuck: It would be beyond absurd, Petesy. Asinine, ludicrous, laughable. In fact, that storied legacy that Jon Jones has been protecting with all his might over the last couple of years would be tarnished by the most ridiculously obvious case of ducking we’ve ever seen. If anything, Aspinall has a chance to remind everyone why he is the best heavyweight going right now in Saturday, and that should rub Jones the wrong way. While he thinks his legacy is secure, so long as he’s “not retired” and talking his big game on hot mics, the Aspinall fight will haunt him.
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Having said all that, I do think Jones will be open to Aspinall in the end. Unless the UFC gives Alex Pereira to him on a platter at the White House, that’s the only fight that carries big interest (assuming they can’t entice Francis Ngannou back).
As for the first part, I do think people will naturally be calling for the fight. People want to see Jones enter a fight as an underdog, with the miles of surrounding doubt becoming the most tempting subplot since Ali went out to meet Foreman in Zaire.
Petesy: Damn, you sold me with that Rumble reference, but I fear they make Pereira vs. Jones and leave Aspinall in the lurch. Even though pay-per-view is apparently dying and they won’t need to rely on buys, Pereira and Jones is arguably the bigger fight, but it’s not the right fight.
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I think if Pereira moves to heavyweight and Jones returns, both should be used to verify Aspinall as champion, and if it doesn’t go the Englishman’s way, you have a superstar as the titleholder in the maximum weight class anyway.
I spoke to Andy Aspinall earlier this week, and I got the impression that they think it’s a bit ridiculous that they were left on the sidelines for a year and a half, forced into an unappealing fight with Gane only for Jones to be rewarded with a return gig against Poatan.
Ariel made the point that Pereira and Jones being at play at heavyweight is a good thing for Aspinall. I’d tend to agree, but I’d favor Jones if he met Pereira and I would expect him to promptly retire immediately after that victory. That would undermine Aspinall’s position as champion, something I think Jones would love to do given how the ordeal has tarnished his legacy to some extent.
Ciryl Gane hopes to avoid going 0-3 in the UFC championship bouts.
(Chris Unger via Getty Images)
3. What does it mean for the UFC heavyweight division if Ciryl Gane wins?
Petesy: It means that the division is undeniably in a weaker place than it has been in a long time. The logic being that Gane was not good enough to defeat the last two undisputed (kind of) champions and with victory over Aspinall he becomes one.
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However, I think that Jones will be far more interested in hanging around for a few more bouts if it Gane does win, so maybe it would lead to good things further down the line. He’s obviously an ideal matchup for Pereira at heavyweight too. Something tells me we won’t have to worry about this scenario playing out, though.
Chuck: In sticking with the 1970s boxing references, it would be like one of those beautiful heavies like Ron Lyle, or Ken Norton, or Jimmy Ellis breaking through as the heavyweight champion while the likes of George Foreman, Muhammad Ali and Smokin’ Joe Frazier were all out there lurking about.
Would we even call it a Golden Era today if that took place? Who knows, but it’d be a lot harder to romanticize.
Not to take anything away from Gane, who for a little while there looked like the kind of game-changing striker who might rearrange the cosmos with his athleticism and power, but we’ve seen him come up short against the best twice before. So, for him to beat Aspinall would feel like the second-best fighter finally breaking through, in a situation where the very best were not partaking. It’s not fair to Gane for his big moment to feel like a possible consolation prize, because beating Aspinall is no small feat, but that’s kind of the set up.
Virna Jandiroba of Brazil and Mackenzie Dern of the U.S. face off for the vacant UFC strawweight title.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
4. Who makes for the better story in the women’s strawweight title fight: 37-year-old Virna Jandiroba, or the persevering Mackenzie Dern?
Chuck: Given that Virna never had the UFC championing her cause, I’d have to go with her. She has had an extremely hard road, so hard (and largely anonymous) that nobody really considered her a contender at all until very recently.
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Think about the ebbs and flows of her career. She lost her UFC debut to Carla Esparza, and a couple of fights later she became just one of Mackenzie Dern’s conquests. Because Dern has been so gradual in her own contendership, Jandiroba was essentially Pluto’d from the conversation at that point. When Amanda Ribas beat her in the one visit Jandiroba made to Abu Dhabi in 2021, she was nothing more than a woodwork figure in a division that doesn’t get a ton of shine, anyway.
Now here she is, five wins and four years later, ready to win that gold. Nobody projected her to be here, and therefore it’s quadruply sweet for Brazil’s most unsung — and untamed — bitsy-star.
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Petesy: I love you going to bat for Virna, Chuck. It’s beautiful and it’s compelling, but you couldn’t convince me in a month of Sundays that this isn’t as close to a lay-up as possible for Mackenzie Dern. I agree with all you’re saying about noble Virna, but she’s already lost to Dern, and despite the American’s inconsistency, Virna’s style plays directly into her hands.
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Dern has a great story too. The apprentice of her father, a legendary Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, who goes on to become a legend in the same sport. She’s also been very vocal about her own struggles with domestic violence, which deserves a lot of credit.
As much as I think there is merit to what you’re saying about Virna, Embedded really drove home how confident Dern is to me. While everyone else is sweating buckets all over the Persian Gulf, we cut to Dern in a bikini at the beach club in episode one. Episode two shows Dern getting a pedicure. It just guides me back to the lay-up scenario. Fair play to Virna, but I’m fairly certain we’re living in Dern’s strawweight era as of next week, so we should prepare ourselves to tell her story.
Umar Nurmagomedov last fought in a nail-biter against Merab Dvalishvili in January.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
5. Is Umar Nurmagomedov the only viable threat currently on the bantamweight roster for Merab Dvalishvili?
Petesy: Umar ran him close before he hit the Merab rounds last time out. He’s a Nurmagomedov and they get treated real nice out there in the Middle East — just ask Paul Hughes — so I think he has every chance he gets a big ovation once his hand gets raised on Saturday night. Dana seems to have promised him a title shot if he can come away with something spectacular, but I think Bautista is a real problem.
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He pulverized the world’s parlays last time out against Patchy and played the ultimate spoiler to Aldo before that. He’s coming in with Virna levels of subterfuge here, but I think it would be the most Mario Bautista sh*t of all time to win a controversial split decision here, setting up and opportunity to kill the division’s king, just when he is beginning to feel the adoration of the community.
I realize I blasted your Virna take only to use it exactly one question later, but here we are, Chuck.
Chuck: Umar says he wants to destroy Merab’s legacy, and I mean, he’s the best equipped to do that. The broken hand factored into that January fight, yet he still gave Merab a fair run for the money. I think now with the experience of having faced Merab’s pace/pressure/cardio/animalistic spirit, having seen the papakha hat up close, he’ll know a little better how to counteract.
Am I trying to manifest a fighter who can actually be a threat to Merab? Maybe, maybe, but I know one thing, if Umar were to get a second crack at Merab and lose, I’m not sure Khabib would invite him into the sauna ever again.
Alexander Volkov of Russia and Jailton Almeida of Brazil face off during the UFC 321 ceremonial weigh-ins.
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
Bonus: Quickly, in a sentence, what is the best fight not mentioned above on UFC 321?
Chuck: It’s hard to call it low-hanging fruit when Alexander Volkov stands 6-foot-9, but I think that somebody’s going down in his big fight with Jailton Almeda — when you’re on the same card as the heavyweight champion it’s a golden chance to make a case for being next.
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Petesy: The amount of punctation needed to make that one sentence is disgraceful so I’m answering this in two. This fight is gonna be a banger, two 145-pound terrors ripping each other to shreds for as long as the fight lasts — Jose Delgado vs. Nathaniel Wood.
