Stipe Miocic knows a little about what Tom Aspinall is going through.
Aspinall vacated the UFC heavyweight title in September after his recovery from multiple eye surgeries took longer than expected. Ciryl Gane poked him in both eyes during their UFC 321 title fight in October 2025, and Aspinall is still dealing with vision problems.
The former two-time heavyweight champion told Casino.org that Aspinall made the right call.
Looking at Tommy’s situation, I just think, ‘Good of him to do that.’ I understand it’s probably hard for him to vacate his title the way he did. I give him kudos for doing that because I know it’s hard for him. He was on top of the world, and then everything changed. … He got an eye poke. I’ve been there.
Miocic suffered a torn retina in his title-winning rematch with Daniel Cormier at UFC 241 in 2019, and he missed the rest of that year.
I’ve torn my retina before, and it’s tough. I just want to give him lots of credit for doing that. It happened to me in my second fight with DC. I got poked in the eye accidentally, and after the fight, I was kind of like, ‘Man, my eyes are kind of weird-looking and feeling weird.’ Unfortunately, these things happen, but he just has to move on from it and just see it as bad luck.
Aspinall has spoken out about Dana White downplaying his injury. Miocic’s advice was to tune it out.
The UFC’s never happy with anyone unless they’re making them a ton of money, so forget about them. I think he did the right thing if you know you’re going to be out that long. I’ve been out for a while, but I’ve been back within the year. If it was any longer than that, I would probably do the same as he did and vacate.
With Aspinall out, Gane was named champion. He defends the title against Josh Hokit at UFC 334.
