Tom Aspinall claims horrifying knee injury in front of 25,000 home fans triggered his journey toward developing an "unapologetic champion mindset"

Tom Aspinall believes that the knee injury he suffered at UFC Fight Night 208 in 2022, which sidelined him for a year, was a blessing in disguise. The Englishman had a recent sitdown with TNT Sports ahead of his UFC 304 co-headliner against Curtis Blaydes, the man who he was facing when he suffered the injury in the first place.

Furthermore, the pair will compete for Aspinall's interim heavyweight championship in the latter's own backyard, as the card is set to go down in Manchester, England. A significant advantage Aspinall will be taking with him to UFC 304 is his mentality, which has been forged by the injury he had suffered.

Speaking to BT Sport in an interview ahead of the card, he described what he went through, saying:

"As a professional athlete, getting injured is bad and becoming inactive is bad, as a professional athlete. And being an active person, if you can't walk, pretty miserable as a professional athlete. Now, for that to happen in front of 25,000 home fans... take a loss, and not know when you're coming back it's very, very hard to deal with, mate. Mentally, more than anything."

Instead of wallowing in his misery, though, Aspinall rebuilt himself and has since gone on to capture UFC interim heavyweight gold. He added:

"I was in the spot where, honestly, I was in the spot where I'm like, I've either got two ways I can go. I can either go all in, like dive in head-first, really embrace the champion lifestyle, let's call it or I'm going to go and do something else with my time. I don't want to be half-in and half-out. I want to really commit to myself to an unapologetic champion mindset and obviously that's what I chose."

Check out Tom Aspinall talk about his mentality ahead of UFC 304 (1:26):

Now Aspinall will defend his title against Blaydes and hope to avenge his lone UFC loss.

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Tom Aspinall's championship mentality was on full display at UFC 295

When Jon Jones, who was scheduled to headline UFC 295 in an undisputed title fight with Stipe Miocic, tore his pectoral tendon, the promotion scrambled and assembled an interim heavyweight title bout on short-notice between Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich.

Despite coming in on short-notice against a terrifying knockout artist who had been training as the backup fighter for the original Jones-Miocic bout, Aspinall welcomed the challenge and went on to knock Pavlovich out in the very first round to become the UFC heavyweight interim champion.

Check out Tom Aspinall knocking out Sergei Pavlovich: