Tom Aspinall says he intends to keep fighting until he is around 37, giving the UFC heavyweight champion roughly four more years in the sport, and he admits the thought of what comes afterwards unsettles him more than anything he faces inside the cage.
Aspinall made the comments as a guest on Joe Marler Will See You Now, the podcast hosted by former England rugby prop Joe Marler and Jake Bhardwaj, in an episode released on August 11.
Asked about life after competition, the 33 year old put it bluntly.
“That probably scares me more than anything else,” Aspinall said. “Because I just think it’s just like who I am. What am I going to do without it? That’s what scares me more is like when I wake up and I’ve not got that.”
He described a similar flatness arriving even in victory.
“I’m always at my lowest mentally after I’ve won a fight,” he said.
Ten Months Out Of The Cage
The conversation carried an edge the format did not intend. Marler, who walked away from rugby in November 2024, steered the discussion toward identity loss from the position of someone already living through it, and described his own struggle with purpose since stepping away.
Aspinall answered as a fighter looking at the same door, and he is closer to it than most reigning champions.
He has not competed since October 25, 2025, when his first defense of the undisputed title against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi was ruled a no contest after Gane poked him in both eyes inside the opening round. Multiple surgeries followed, and Aspinall did not confirm he was back in full training until late June.
The Rematch Still Has No Date
Gane claimed the interim heavyweight title by stopping Alex Pereira in the second round at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14, then called for the unification bout to land in Paris in September. Aspinall accepted within hours.
That card, now titled UFC Fight Night: Hooker vs. Parnasse, takes place at Accor Arena on September 5 with neither heavyweight on the lineup. No fight is currently scheduled for Aspinall anywhere.
The holdup is money. Aspinall’s manager Eddie Hearn has spent months publicly attacking the champion’s UFC deal, and told Ariel Helwani that a conversation about compensation would have to happen before any unification fight could be finalized.
It leaves Aspinall in a strange spot for a man worried about the emptiness waiting on the other side. He is 33, he holds the biggest belt in the sport, he has a four year plan for the rest of his career, and he has no opponent, no date and no venue for any of it.
