Abu Dhabi – After the unfortunate disappointment of Saturday’s UFC 321 main event, Dana White says the plan is to bring the fight back.
The heavyweight title fight between Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane ended in a No Contest after Aspinall was stabbed in the eye and was unable to continue late in the opening round. The result was a huge disappointment for the fans at the Etihad Arena, many of whom streamed out of the venue. Those who stayed expressed their displeasure.
“I feel how everyone feels. Great show, bad ending,” White, the UFC’s CEO and president, said after the fight. “I think after the [Jon] Jones fought, many people wrote Gane off. He looked damn good tonight.”
The fight itself looked “good,” White added, suggesting it “looked like we were going to play a few rounds, and it was going to be a good fight.”
The plan now is to book the rematch, White confirmed. “Yes. Total pain in the ass, but yes.” As for eye pokes, which the UFC recently tried to curb with an ill-fated change in glove design, “whatever you do to the gloves, they’re going to happen,” he said.
The rematch between Aspinall and Gane is one that White hopes to book soon. While White is usually non-committal about post-event matchmaking, he went so far as to suggest that the UFC hopes to bring the fight back perhaps as early as the new year.
“Yeah, I mean, they’re both in good shape, except for what’s wrong with his eye. Both guys are uninjured. So as soon as possible.”
Asked about the circumstances surrounding the declaration of the No Contest – ultimately the fighter has a lot of say in whether he can continue after an eye poke – White suggested it was out of the promoter’s control.
“I can’t let people fight. And you certainly can’t let someone continue if he or she feels like he or she has been hurt,” White said. “Only Tom knows what happened. Could he see, could he not see, could he continue? Only he knows.”
Watch the full UFC 321 post-fight press conference with Dana White above.
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