Tom Aspinall’s eyes are looking worse than ever after a double-eye surgery performed on the UFC heavyweight champ on Tuesday. Aspinall has been in and out of hospitals since getting brutally eye-poked by Ciryl Gane during their UFC 321 fight on October 25th, 2025. What an Abu Dhabi doctor initially brushed off as trivial turned […]
Tom Aspinall’s eyes are looking worse than ever after a double-eye surgery performed on the UFC heavyweight champ on Tuesday.
Aspinall has been in and out of hospitals since getting brutally eye-poked by Ciryl Gane during their UFC 321 fight on October 25th, 2025. What an Abu Dhabi doctor initially brushed off as trivial turned out to be bilateral Brown’s syndrome, which affects the muscles or tendons in the eyes and can cause double vision.
The British fighter had already talked about having surgeries on both eyes over the Christmas holidays, and now it looks like he had another treatment at Optegra Eye Hospital in London, England. The clinic shared some photos of the procedure and a reassuring message on the procedure.
“After his highly publicized eye poke injury, Optegra’s expert team is proud to have supported MMA fighter and UFC Heavyweight Champion Tom Aspinall,” the statement read. “Over recent months we’ve been working closely with him on his recovery. Following his operation on both eyes we will continue the journey to get Tom’s vision back to fighting fitness.”
Then Tom Aspinall shared a photo of his extremely red eyes following the procedure, which was not so reassuring. He added a gif from the Michael Jackson Thriller video implying he looked like an undead zombie … and we can’t say we disagree with that assessment.
Aspinall has been as transparent as possible through this entire debacle with his eyes because some people are still acting like he faked his way out of fighting Ciryl Gane after the eye-poke, which was one of the worst looking examples we’ve seen in twenty years of covering the sport. Even other UFC fighters got into the accusations, with fellow heavyweight Waldo Cortes-Acosta mocking Aspinall by wearing an eye patch.
We’re hopeful Aspinall will make it back into the cage and make everyone eat their words, but for now it’s clear he needs time to recover from this latest procedure. How long? It’s still unclear, but considering other fighters have rushed back from eye surgery and ended up blind? It could be a minute.
Category: General Sports
