Tom Aspinall: Officials not open to changing wonky UFC 304 local start time

Tom Aspinall is excited about where he’s fighting next. It’s the time of his walkout that has him concerned.

The interim heavyweight champion—No. 1 in his division in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings—defends his belt in the co-main event of UFC 304, which takes place in Manchester, England. Though Aspinall gets a home date, the broadcast schedule for the card has been set to accommodate North American pay-per-view buyers, which means Aspinall’s fight will take place in the early hours of the morning local time.

It’s a decision that officials aren’t budging on as Aspinall learned firsthand.

“No apologies,” Aspinall told Submission Radio when asked if he’d spoken to anyone about changing the event start time. “I don’t expect an apology either, this is the UFC we’re dealing with. I just kind of put the feelers out there a little bit, to see like, this is a bit of a shitter for me and the other fighters and the U.K. fans who want to come watch it live. The thing is, I’ve got all kinds of friends coming. I was with my friend today and he was saying, he’s got child care for the night, but obviously the show is going to finish at 6 a.m. So he’s essentially going to have to stay up all night and then he’s only got childcare until, like, 9 a.m., so he’s going to get literally an hour or two of sleep in there. Just stuff like that.

“I was putting the feelers out, ‘Listen, is there any chance we can switch that?’ And they were just like, ‘Nope. Absolutely not.’ … There was no play on that at all. Just straight-up, no, that was it.”

Aspinall has headlined in his native England several times for the UFC, though this will be the first time that he fights there on PPV. He takes on Curtis Blaydes in a rematch of their July 2022 encounter that saw Aspinall go down with a knee injury just 15 seconds into the fight. Aspinall was sidelined for a year, but made a triumphant return in 2023 with first-round knockouts of Marcin Tybura and Sergei Pavlovich, the latter victory earning him an interim UFC belt.

Defeating Blaydes is a tall challenge as it is and now Aspinall has to factor in how he’s going to put on a peak performance under less-than-ideal circumstances.

“In all honesty, I have no idea right now,” Aspinall said. “I’m a bit lost at the thought of it. My original thought was I’m going to go to Vegas, I’m going to train in Vegas, and I’m going to get on Vegas time and I’m going to stick with that. Then I was, like, shit, Vegas is like 18 hours away. For me to be on Vegas time and then five, six days before the fight come back to Manchester and travel 18 hours, that’s exhausting just within itself whether you’re on a time difference or not. So I pushed that to the side.”

“I f*cking—I don’t know,” he continued. “I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m doing at this point. I’m going to speak to a couple of people probably who are a lot smarter than I am and see if I can have some kind of compromise. I was thinking something like maybe I try and sleep at 9 p.m., wake up about 1, 2, just be awake for a couple of hours and then maybe work out at 5. Maybe go back to sleep for a couple of hours at 7, 8, I don’t really know.”

Blaydes remains Aspinall’s lone loss in his eight-fight UFC run. His other seven opponents all failed to go the distance with Aspinall, with only Andrei Arlovski making it to Round 2.

Aspinall will be hoping for another quick night at UFC 304, but at this point, he is prepared for anything.

“There’s some weird stuff going on with it and as someone who has traveled a fair bit and been on different times, I know that it can affect you,” Aspinall said. “Definitely. So obviously I want it to affect me as little as possible. I’m the type of guy that I’ll do everything I can to win, everything I can, and if that means changing my sleep time to whichever way I can to the best advantage, I absolutely will do. But I don’t know what that looks like at this point.”