Ciryl Gane says Tom Aspinall is 'a little mentally fragile' over the eye-poke row

The new UFC heavyweight champion says the poke that ended their fight was an accident, that fouls happen every weekend, and that Britain's Tom Aspinall took it too far.

Ciryl Gane has called Tom Aspinall "a little mentally fragile" and said the British fighter took their eye-poke row too far, MMA Mania reported.

Speaking in French on the Zack En Roue Libre show, the new undisputed heavyweight champion answered the charge that he is a dirty fighter: that he poked Aspinall in the eyes on purpose and beat Alex Pereira with punches to the back of the head. The fallout from the Aspinall fight ended with Aspinall giving up the title.

"We knew he was a little mentally fragile," Gane said. "Brother, you got poked in the eye. You have the right to stop. That's your right. But you don't need to do everything you did. Honestly when my finger went into his eye, my feeling was that it wasn't forceful at all. It looked forceful, but it didn't feel forceful to me."

Gane described the poke as head control gone wrong. "It's posting, you see, and it slips while he's moving forward," he said, adding that it "happens almost every weekend, except they decided to focus on me every time like I'm a cheater."

He said fouls were part of the sport: a leg kick becomes a low blow when an opponent ducks, and a punch lands on the back of the head when an opponent turns. "These things are trivial. It happens all the time, like you have no idea how much it happens."

Gane said he had fought on through the same thing himself, against Derrick Lewis when he won the interim belt. "I saw double for three or four minutes. He poked me in the eye, and my vision hadn't recovered and I kept fighting like that. I didn't complain about it. These things happen, you know what I mean?"

Alexander Volkov, who has fought both men, has already hit back, accusing Gane of cheating. Gane's first defence is against Josh Hokit at UFC 334 on 14 November, live on TNT Sports in the UK.