UFC interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall isn’t sure how best to prepare for fighting after five in the morning.
The Manchester native will have a massive homecoming at UFC 304 on July 27, but won’t make his ring walk until the early hours of Sunday morning. The event will be a global pay-per-view, and promoters are keen to make it inviting to American viewers with the lengthy time difference.
But Aspinall is finding it difficult to train properly for the adjusted start time, and begged the promotion to move it around. Last year, they allowed Leon Edwards to defend his welterweight belt at UK primetime against Kamaru Usman, but it appears that formula wasn’t a success as they reverted to American time.
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Tom Aspinall admits he feels ‘lost’ as he adjusts to wild UFC 304 start time
Speaking with Submission Radio, the UFC interim heavyweight champion explained how he is finding it difficult to plan his training around having to fight so early in the morning. He believes the event should have been organised around the UK crowd, and that his fight should have a more standard 11pm kickoff.
“In all honesty, I have no idea right now,” Aspinall said when asked how he will deal with the awkward training times to prepare for such a late ring walk. “I’m a bit lost at the thought of it.”
He had plans to train in America and only return to the UK for fight week, but scrapped it when he considered the jet lag during that period. “My original thought was I’m going to go to Vegas,” he explained.
“I’m going to train in Vegas, and I’m going to get on Vegas time and I’m going to stick with that. Then I was, like, s***, Vegas is like 18 hours away.
“For me to be on Vegas time and then five, six days before the fight come back to Manchester and travel 18 hours, that’s exhausting just within itself whether you’re on a time difference or not. So I pushed that to the side.”
Tom Aspinall still doesn’t know how best to prepare for UFC 304 main event
With two months to the day until his fight, the hard-hitting heavyweight is still unsure of exactly how he plans to make the timezones work best. His opponent Curtis Blaydes will have the benefit of training in America, but it seems Aspinall will have to work around strange UK times.
“I f***ing, I don’t know,” he continued. “I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m doing at this point. I’m going to speak to a couple of people probably who are a lot smarter than I am and see if I can have some kind of compromise.
“I was thinking something like maybe I try and sleep at 9pm, wake up about 1, 2, just be awake for a couple of hours and then maybe work out at 5. Maybe go back to sleep for a couple of hours at 7, 8. I don’t really know.”
Tom Aspinall pushed for a new start time to UFC 304 after controversy
After speaking to friends attending the event, Aspinall says he spoke to the promotion about moving it to a more fan-friendly start time. But he was quickly shot down and is now being forced to prepare for a main event that could start as late as 5.30am.
“This is the UFC we’re dealing with,” he explained. “I just kind of put the feelers out there a little bit, to see like, this is a bit of a s****er for me and the other fighters and the UK fans who want to come watch it live.
“The thing is, I’ve got all kinds of friends coming. I was with my friend today and he was saying, he’s got child care for the night, but obviously the show is going to finish at 6am.
“So he’s essentially going to have to stay up all night and then he’s only got childcare until, like, 9am, so he’s going to get literally an hour or two of sleep in there. Just stuff like that.”