Tom Aspinall steps aside, again, and the UFC heavyweight title slips a little further into the twilight.
On Sept. 14, 2026, the 33-year-old Englishman vacated his belt, explaining on social media that his eyes still haven’t fully healed from the gouging he suffered against Ciryl Gane at UFC 321 last October. For a man in his prime, it’s another brutal twist: one fight in 26 months, a title finally in his hands, and now he can’t even see the date of his own return.
He let it go anyway. A courtesy to the division, he called it. A division that hasn’t really made sense in years.
A champion every fan can see — and none the UFC can keep
To understand how bizarre heavyweight has become, you almost have to run it back like a fever dream.
March 27, 2021, UFC 260. Francis Ngannou flattens Stipe Miocic in their rematch and claims the lineal UFC heavyweight title. It feels like a coronation that’s been promised since Ngannou first stormed through the division with six finishes in six UFC fights. He’s the man now, finally.
Then the clock starts ticking.
The UFC wants him back out quickly, defending at UFC 265 against Derrick Lewis just four and a half months later. Ngannou says he needs more time. The promotion bristles. So it does what it has so often done when a champion doesn’t move on its schedule: it creates a Plan B.
That Plan B is Ciryl Gane.
On Aug. 7, 2021 at UFC 265, in Lewis’ own Houston backyard, Gane picks him apart and finishes him in the third round. He becomes interim champion — the “lesser” king — and earns a unification bout with Ngannou.
Jan. 22, 2022, UFC 270. Ngannou turns up with a compromised knee and a point to prove. Gane looks like the slicker striker early, but Ngannou leans on wrestling, of all things, and grinds out a five-round win to unify the belts. It’s a champion’s performance, made more impressive by the injury and the stylistic switch.
It’s also the last time heavyweight feels remotely normal.
Behind the scenes, UFC CEO Dana White is rooting against Ngannou. In front of the cameras, Ngannou is the baddest man on the planet. On paper, he’s lineal champion. In reality, a split is coming.
Ngannou walks, Jones ascends, and the belt starts to blur
On Jan. 14, 2023, negotiations collapse. The UFC strips Ngannou, waives its one-year matching rights, and the lineal heavyweight king walks away. He signs with the PFL, crosses into boxing, and goes on to scare Tyson Fury in his debut. In the wider combat sports world, it’s a wild, era-defining move.
Inside the UFC, though, there’s a vacancy at the top of the marquee.
March 4, 2023, UFC 285. Jon Jones, after years of teasing a move to heavyweight, finally does it. He faces former interim champion Gane for the vacant title. The fight lasts just over two minutes. Jones takes Gane down, wraps up a guillotine, and suddenly he’s a two-division UFC champion.
The asterisks arrive just as quickly. Jones never beat Ngannou. The lineal king is somewhere else, boxing. The UFC has its champion, but the story is already fraying at the edges.
By November 2023, the promotion is trying to stage a legacy fight. Jones vs. Miocic at Madison Square Garden for UFC 295: the greatest light heavyweight of all time against the most decorated UFC heavyweight champion. Then Jones tears a pectoral muscle. Miocic refuses a replacement. The UFC reaches for its favorite crutch again.
Another interim belt.
This time, it’s Tom Aspinall vs. Sergei Pavlovich. Aspinall needs just 69 seconds to flatten Pavlovich and claim the interim title. He’s now the man behind the man — the interim champion to Jones’ non-lineal belt.
Aspinall rises, Jones stalls, and time gets wasted
The calendar turns to July 27, 2024, UFC 304. Jones is still out. Dana White is still calling him the greatest of all time and the best pound-for-pound fighter on earth. The UFC clings to Jones vs. Miocic like a relic it refuses to sell.
To keep the division moving, Aspinall defends his interim title against Curtis Blaydes. The idea of defending an interim belt is absurd on its face — these titles are supposed to be temporary — but heavyweight has drifted so far from normal that the absurd feels routine.
Aspinall makes quick work of it anyway, avenging his lone UFC loss by knocking Blaydes out in 60 seconds. He looks every inch a true champion, but the asterisks keep flying. Blaydes isn’t Jones. Jones never fought Ngannou. The lineage is a maze.
On Nov. 16, 2024, at UFC 309, the long-delayed Jones–Miocic fight finally happens at Madison Square Garden. Miocic is 42, a shadow of the man who once ruled the division. Jones stops him in the third round and “retains” the heavyweight title. On paper, that clears the way for a unification bout with Aspinall.
Then nothing.
For months, Jones repeats that Aspinall does nothing for his legacy. He travels through Vietnam and Thailand, posts videos of himself on small motorbikes, talks about “living my best life,” and shows no interest in the man holding the interim belt. Aspinall waits. The UFC stands by Jones as long as it can.
By June 2025, the waiting game collapses. Jones vacates the title and announces his retirement. The belt is free again. For a moment.
A couple of weeks later, Jones hears the UFC is planning a show on the White House lawn to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. It’s the kind of stage that speaks to him. He wants back in. He wants that card. Maybe against Alex Pereira. He starts lobbying.
White publicly gives it a one-in-a-billion chance. Jones lobbies anyway.
The eye poke, the controversy, and Gane’s strange résumé
On Oct. 25, 2025, UFC 321 arrives. Ngannou is long gone. Jones is out of the picture. Aspinall, the stand-in champion, finally has the “interim” tag stripped from his title. He is, officially, the UFC heavyweight champion.
He got there without beating Ngannou or Jones. The sky fills with more asterisks.
The UFC sends him straight into a defense against Gane in Abu Dhabi, the match meant to restart the division properly. For most of the first round, it’s competitive. Then everything implodes.
Gane’s fingers rake into Aspinall’s eyes, deep enough that the description “knuckle-deep” doesn’t feel like hyperbole. The fight is stopped. The crowd boos. White publicly downplays the injury. Aspinall is left fighting not just for his belt, but for the legitimacy of his own pain.
He spends months trying to convince the world his eyes are badly damaged.
By June 14, 2026, with Aspinall sidelined and his status disputed, the UFC reaches for the interim label yet again. UFC Freedom 250 pairs Gane with two-division champion Alex Pereira, who is chasing history as the first fighter to win UFC titles in three weight classes. It’s a blockbuster idea: the technician heavyweight against the sport’s most ruthless climber.
Gane wins by TKO. The headlines don’t stop there.
He lands a series of illegal blows to the back of Pereira’s head, sparking outrage and debate. Pereira spends the following months verbally roasting referee Herb Dean. Gane, meanwhile, slips away with his second interim belt, setting himself up for another shot at full championship status.
His record now reads like a riddle: 0-1 in lineal title fights, 0-1-1 no contest in non-lineal title fights, and 2-0 in interim title fights. He’s a specialist in almost-but-not-quite.
A vacant throne and a belt gone underground
That’s the landscape Aspinall steps into when he announces, on Sept. 14, 2026, that he’s vacating the heavyweight title. His eyes still aren’t right. He can’t defend. He won’t hold the division hostage.
The UFC now has a choice. It can simply upgrade Gane from interim to full champion — a move that would be met with howls, given the eye gouge against Aspinall and the controversy in the Pereira fight. Or it can stage a fight for the vacant belt, either a rematch with Pereira or a fresh tilt against the undefeated Josh Hokit, who brings more schtick than résumé but no losses.
Whatever the decision, one thing is clear: the title itself has become almost mythical.
Ngannou never lost it in the cage. Jones never lost it in the cage. Aspinall never lost it in the cage. Three champions, three exits, zero decisive dethronings. The belt has slipped through contracts, injuries, retirements, and no contests, passing from hand to hand without a clean, visible transfer of power.
It feels less like a championship and more like contraband, a piece of evidence being shuffled around in the dark.
At some point, the UFC will have to bring it back into the light. It will have to put two heavyweights in a cage with no asterisks, no interim labels, no eye pokes, no retirements looming over the result, and let them fight until one man leaves no doubt.
Until that happens, the most famous belt in mixed martial arts might as well be buried — waiting for someone, finally, to dig it up and claim it in a way nobody can dispute.
