Growing impatient with the lack of movement on his UFC return, Tom Aspinall has revealed how fear has kept him more than grounded during his impressive Octagon run.
Aspinall, a fan-favorite heavyweight star, currently holds the promotion’s interim championship in the division and has done so for a record-breaking 550 days now.
Growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement on the promise of a title unification bout against Jon Jones, Aspinall has spoken candidly of how he deals with the pressures and worries of fighting at the elite level.
The British fighter takes inspiration from the heralded former two-weight champion, Georges St-Pierre, and has become a firm believer in the Canadian’s preachings.
“We just talked about how fear can help you,” Aspinall said on the High Performance podcast.
“And I just wish that when I was coming up that more people would have spoke about it more openly because there’s a guy who came way before me, GSP, who in my opinion is the best MMA fighter to ever do it. He spoke openly about fear,” Aspinall added in admiration.
Explaining how MMA was really an ego-driven sport, the UFC interim heavyweight champion cited a team sport like soccer to make his point about just how lonely it can get for a fighter.
“Like you don’t only like football for example, you lose a football game, you might lose 2-1. There are 10 other people on the pitch you can also share that blame with. You’re also probably going to play again in the next week or two. And redeem yourself,” he continued.
“If you get knocked out in front of millions of people, not only are you losing, which is pretty grim — you are also getting beat up in front of everybody. You are also not going to have the chance to redeem yourself for at least 3-4 months. You might beat up again after that,” Aspinall explained.
He further noted that a fighter can do everything right and still lose since there are so many variables.
“People say ‘oh, he zigged when he should have zagged’. But sometimes it’s not even that. Just one lands, and it’s over. You have not even made a mistake,” the British fighter further noted.
And Aspinall is more than right in his comments. It is because of these very reasons that GSP also claimed to have been afraid of fighting every time he went into the octagon.
St-Pierre admits his fear of competing in the UFC
A decorated former two-division champion, Canadian star St-Pierre has been heralded as likely the greatest mixed martial arts fighter to ever compete at the highest level.
Winning both middleweight and welterweight gold, ‘Rush’ was considered one of the most technically gifted mixed martial artists to ever compete. However, his greatness was as manufactured for public spectacle as Aspinall claims.
St-Pierre has candidly admitted he was more than terrified of competing on more than one occasion.
“I’m the kind of guy that I’m not afraid to admit that I’m afraid when I go fight… Even though I’m scared and I’m afraid to fail, when I walk to the Octagon, I look like I’m — it’s impossible for me to fail. And I look very confident, like I’m going to kick ass for sure,” St-Pierre told FUEL TV.
“But the truth is, deep down inside, I’m scared as hell,” he has asserted.
