UFC Freedom 250 is just over a week away, with the card set to take place at the White House in Washington, D.C.
An interim heavyweight title fight featuring Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane serves as the co-main event; undisputed champ (though he’ll be very disputed once that interim title is awarded) Tom Aspinall looms, set to return from an eye injury hopefully by the end of the year. Yet now under the management of boxing promoter Eddie Hearn, who is a heated rival of UFC CEO and President Dana White these days, it seems Aspinall may not be fighting soon.
“I think it’s really interesting what’s happening in the UFC right now,” Hearn said in a recent media scrum at a Pili vs. Taylor press conference (h/t Bloody Elbow). “There is a monumental change for the swing of the business. They’ve got to be careful. At the end of the day, I’m not going to let Tom Aspinall fight for the kind of money that’s in his contract, to be involved in a fight against [Alex] Pereira or [Ciryl] Gane for literally one fiftieth of the revenue of that show. F*ck that! I won’t let him do it. And he’s not going to.”
“It’s time those UFC fighters stop being mugs and start to understand that these people are taking advantage of them. They deserve better. They don’t mind paying these fighters [boxers] all this money, but they won’t do it for the UFC fighters.”
“My advice for Tom Aspinall would be ‘don’t you dare take that fight for the money that’s in your contract. You are one of the biggest stars in UFC. That fight against Pereira or Gane is one of the biggest fights that the UFC can make, and you want to— I will tell you the number in time, if we get to that. UFC fans, everybody will be sick to their stomach about the money Tom Aspinall is supposed to get for that fight, for the revenue that exists for that fight. It’s not fair.”
It remains to be seen what sort of leverage Aspinall and Hearn have, short of simply tying up the division, given the UFC heavyweight champion is, as Eddie Hearn notes, under contract. The UFC, meanwhile, has failed to put together some of the biggest heavyweight fights possible in recent years, primarily match-ups featuring Jon Jones against all of Francis Ngannou, Tom Aspinall, and Alex Pereira.