“He needs to start telling everyone to go f*ck themselves. Simple as that.”
That was Michael Bisping’s advice to Tom Aspinall, who’s in the middle of dealing with heavy criticism from many UFC fans.
Aspinall, champion of the UFC heavyweight division, has been the target of online attacks following the no contest result from his first undisputed title defense against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 in October. Aspinall was poked in both eyes and said he couldn’t continue fighting, resulting in a no contest. Aspinall has been dragged for not continuing to fight, and many have claimed that he exaggerated the injury as he appeared to be losing to Gane in the few minutes the fight lasted.
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This week, Aspinall went public with some receipts, posting a doctor’s assessment of his injury in his first comment since the incident in October. Bisping advised Aspinall to stop trying to prove his case.
“Don’t come online and show the doctor’s note,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “I understand why he wants to do that. He wants to say, ‘Look, six weeks later and the doctor still says I’m not fit to fight,’ but all you are doing is playing into the narrative of the haters. Playing into this narrative that you’re a victim, showing the world that you’re vulnerable. You don’t have to do that. We all saw you get poked. They were deep, and it was a double eye poke that rolled all the way out to the knuckle. It was a shame. It’s a bloody travesty that it happened. Just come back and whoop some ass, and on the way take no prisoners.
“Sure, say Ciryl Gane did it on purpose. Call him a pussy because you’re going to set foot in the octagon, and you’re going to fight the guy. Say, ‘I’m going to absolutely marmelize you. I’m going to make you pay for being the cheating bastard that you are.'”
Bisping, who’s now retired but in his heyday was a popular and polarizing fighter, knows a thing or two about how the MMA fan base works. He thinks that Aspinall is trying to be liked, but he finds that to be a lost cause.
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“When you want the crowd to like you, when you beg the masses to like you, to get behind you, to get on board, they don’t do that,” Bisping said. “That’s not how this works in social media and fandom throughout TV and sports and the rest of it. When you want to be liked, when you’re trying to show, ‘Hey, listen. I’m the victim here,’ for some reason, it just turns people off. You have to be the guy that doesn’t give a damn. That’s what people like. That’s what people respect.”
In his recent update, Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) said he was diagnosed with bilateral traumatic Brown’s syndrome – a rare eye condition affecting both eyes, causing a restriction in upward eye movement when the eye is turned inward. He’s still not medically cleared to fight and hasn’t even been training.
Aspinall will continue to monitor his eye with specialists, and said surgery is even something that’s on the table. An immediate rematch between Aspinall and Gane is expected to take place in the near future, according to UFC CEO Dana White.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Michael Bisping fed up with Tom Aspinall eye poke criticism
