Aspinall vs Gane press conference live: Latest updates as UFC 321 rivals face off
Britain’s Aspinall defends the UFC heavyweight title against France’s Gane on Saturday
Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane took to the stage at the UFC 321 press conference on Thursday, ahead of their highly-anticipated title fight on Saturday.
In the main event of UFC 321 in Abu Dhabi, Aspinall makes his first defence of the undisputed heavyweight title, having been elevated from interim champion upon Jon Jones’s retirement this summer.
Britain’s Aspinall, 32, is fighting for the first time since July 2024, when he made the rare decision to defend the interim belt during Jones’s absence from the cage. On that night in Manchester, the Wigan heavyweight stopped Curtis Blaydes in barely a minute – replicating the usual destruction he produces when he enters the Octagon.
Now he takes on France’s Gane, who is surely in the last-chance saloon, having previously failed to win the undisputed belt on two occasions. Gane, a former interim champion, lost undisputed title fights with Francis Ngannou in 2022 and Jones in 2023, but Aspinall insists he will not take the 35-year-old lightly.
Ahead of Saturday’s all-European headline bout, Aspinall and Gane delivered their final pre-fight statements at Thursday’s press conference. Follow live updates below, as The Independent reports from Abu Dhabi.
UFC 321 press conference live
UFC 321 press conference live
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UFC 321: Aspinall vs Gane start time, card and how to watch fights
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Read Will Castle’s interview with London’s Nathaniel Wood, who fights on Saturday’s prelims!
A very open chat between the featherweight and our man.
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Here’s our exclusive interview with Tom Aspinall, who was gracious in letting us spend the day with him and his team, at their gym and at Aspinall’s family home.
Here’s how the nicest guy in MMA became the baddest man on the planet, as told by Tom and those around him:
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Why Aspinall vs Gane is the highest-pressure fight in the UFC
What’s the French for “third time’s the charm”? For full transparency, this is a rhetorical question that will be answered in the final paragraph of this article, but the saying must have been uttered to Ciryl Gane at least once in the build-up to UFC 321.
The thing Gane pines for most in his sporting life will, for the third time, be within his grasp on Saturday, kept somewhere safe inside Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Arena: the undisputed heavyweight title.
Gane, now 35, knows what it is like to feel the embrace of the interim belt, and to trace its gold, embossed lettering with the 4oz gloves that serve as every UFC fighter’s greatest negotiation tool.
Yet the Frenchman failed to unify his title with Francis Ngannou’s official version in 2022, failed to withstand Jon Jones with the vacant undisputed belt on the line in 2023, and on Saturday, he will share the cage with a man who uses those leathery negotiation tools like no one else can.
Read our UFC 321 main-event preview:
How Jon Jones made Tom Aspinall vs Ciryl Gane the highest-pressure fight in the UFC
UFC 321 press conference live
The fighters face off, and that’s your lot.
Nothing especially explosive, but we didn’t expect it.
Tension, though, ahead of Aspinall vs Gane. One wrong move could cost either heavyweight.
UFC 321 press conference live
One fan asks if Aspinall should bring a pillow, “because Gane is going to sleep”.
“Take it easy,” Gane says.
UFC 321 press conference live
Aspinall is asked about his joke that he is planning to win a “controversial split decision”.
A French journalist jokes that the French will boo if that is the case.
“So will I!” adds White.
UFC 321 press conference live
Nurmagomedov on whether he has extra motivation to get back to a title shot given Merab Dvalishvili, who beat him in January and antagonises him online, is the champ:
“No, no, it’s too boring to talk about this guy all the time. I want to talk about the belt.”
Nurmagomedov asks Dana White if the boss can make his fight with Bautista an official No 1 contender’s fight.
White urges Nurmagomedov and Bautista to go out there and make it clear the winner should be next. The crowd likes that.
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