Interim UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall suffered what many deem the only legitimate loss of his career when he fell victim to the ‘Submission of the Year’ in 2015.
These days, Aspinall has been widely deemed the top heavyweight in mixed martial arts owing to his quick rise to gold on the sport’s biggest stage.
While yet to claim undisputed status in the UFC, Jon Jones’ apparent reluctance to fight Aspinall has made some recognize the Brit as the division’s true champion.
Aside from Aspinall’s freak injury against Curtis Blaydes, the interim titleholder’s UFC record is spotless.
But the 32-year-old’s career isn’t without a couple of setbacks, one of which looked set to propel a different English heavyweight toward the top.
Stuart Austin submitted then-future UFC champion Tom Aspinall in 2015
After three first-round finishes that totaled just 73 seconds of cage time, Aspinall faced 8-2 heavyweight Stuart Austin at BAMMA 21 in June 2015.
The bout came to an end with just over a minute of round two remaining when Austin forced Aspinall to tap out to a gruesome-looking heel hook submission.
Austin went on to collect the promotion’s ‘Submission of the Year’ award for 2015 and later won the BAMMA heavyweight belt to cement himself as one to watch.
Aspinall’s only other pre-UFC loss came just two fights after he was submitted by Austin.
That one came in more questionable fashion, with a downward elbow that was then ruled an illegal move causing a disqualification against Lukasz Parobiec in 2016.
Unlike Tom Aspinall, Stuart Austin never made it to the UFC
After three straight wins following his DQ setback, Aspinall made his way to the UFC. He’s since risen through the ranks and currently finds himself pushing for a unification fight with Jones, the man widely regarded as the greatest of all time.
Things have played out considerably differently for the only man to ‘legitimately’ defeat Aspinall.
Following the end of his BAMMA reign, Austin endured inconsistency inside the cage, failing to amass winning runs under banners such as EFC and the PFL.
During an interview with talkSPORT in July 2024, ‘He-Man’ admitted that he fell out of love with fighting.
“I’m not really motivated by fights. I enjoy training,” Austin said. “It’s an annoying place, you know, competitively, career-wise and also financially. It just sucks to be honest. It’s massively frustrating.
“I make no secret of the fact I really don’t enjoy competing anymore. I hate it. I do all the stuff and prepare myself to actually go out there and do my thing and then for it to be cancelled, it just feels like a waste of time, to be honest.
“I used to love it. I’ve always just really, really enjoyed competing. There’s just a point in time where I just don’t enjoy the stress of competition anymore. It’s extremely stressful. … There was a time when I was younger, when I really enjoyed the stress and that kind of feeling, and now I just don’t.”
Should Austin’s time competing be up, his career would have ended on a three-fight winning run.
The Brit hasn’t lost since a TKO defeat to the then-defending champion Bruno Cappelozza at PFL 2 in 2022.
During the same interview, Austin acknowledged the superior success enjoyed by Aspinall despite the result of their clash.
However, the 36-year-old insisted that he holds no bitter feelings about how things have gone in his career.
“Sure, [Aspinall’s] been more successful than me, but I literally don’t care at all,” Austin said. “I don’t think you understand how much I don’t enjoy it anymore. I’m just at peace with it, man. It is what it is. He did it and I didn’t. I genuinely don’t worry about that.”