Six months ago, Tom Aspinall was a celebrated UFC Heavyweight champion. Today? A massive amount of internet trolls have completely turned the tables on him. Despite Peter Carroll of Uncrowned documenting Tom Aspinall’s recent double eye surgery, there is a growing cottage industry online accusing Aspinall of either faking or exaggerating his medical condition.
With a growing sentiment from terminally online MMA fans that UFC’s Heavyweight division should be put on ice, The MMA Draw podcast this week puts the blame exactly where it belongs for today’s sad state of affairs.
Today’s UFC created the current conditions of heavyweight depravity. Their historical refusal to pay elite heavyweights — think Fedor Emelianenko — combined with swallowing up their rivals who built empires on great heavyweight fights (PRIDE, Strikeforce) is what has led us down this depressing road.
Heavyweight MMA always has a valuable place in this sport. If the powers-that-be didn’t believe in this, The Rock wouldn’t have bothered to spend all his time and energy trying to win an Oscar for his remix of The Smashing Machine (Mark Kerr).
This current sad state of affairs for heavyweight MMA is actually abnormal by all historical metrics. Nate and Zach bring the heat this week by bringing up the past history of great heavyweight fights in Mixed Martial Arts and how it was major heavyweight fights that turned UFC from generating millions of dollars to generating billions of dollars.
If you love MMA history or want to learn more about MMA history, this week’s podcast hits the sweet spot in a big way.
For our paid subscribers, we take a look at the UFC’s 2026 calendar and juxtapose it to TKO’s current performance regarding site fees. With online fans spending so much energy talking about empty seats at the NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles and sluggish ticket sales for Wrestlemania 42 in Las Vegas, the obsession with process over substance among sports executives is finally starting to catch up to them. Throw in recent revisions on true American job losses in 2025 and you can quickly see a changing picture emerging for this 2026 economic climate.
Get ahead of this crazy combat sports news cycle months, if not years, in advance. You will thank us later.
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Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com.
