Josh Hokit Questions Whether Tom Aspinall's Eye Injury Is Even Real

Josh Hokit doesn't buy the eye injury. The undefeated heavyweight — 10-0 with six knockouts and three submissions — flatly suggested that reigning champion Tom Aspinall is faking a problem to wriggle out of his UFC contract, and he did it in about the crudest way possible.

In a since-shared clip, Hokit joked that Aspinall's teammates were fouling up his pillow to give him pink eye, which the champ then documents on Instagram. It's a shot, obviously, but it lands in a real gap: Aspinall's last appearance ended in a No Contest against Ciryl Gane after an accidental eye poke stopped things in the opening round.

That No Contest is the whole backdrop here. Aspinall (15-3, 11 KO, 4 SUB) has barely fought since inheriting the belt, and the eye issue has become the reason nothing's moving at the top of the division. When a champion can't stay active, the contenders start filling the silence — and Hokit is happy to be loud.

Why Hokit's Talking

The timing isn't random. Hokit meets Gane next at UFC 334 in a card literally built around that pairing, so poking the champion keeps his name in the same sentence as the title. Win that, and the math gets simple: the #4 heavyweight becomes the guy the division can't ignore.

There's also the resume to back the mouth. Hokit walked through Derrick Lewis last time out, stopping him by second-round TKO, and he's yet to lose a professional fight. A perfect record and a knockout of a proven finisher buys a fighter the right to talk sideways about the belt-holder.

For Aspinall, the answer is straightforward and annoying at the same time: get healthy, get booked, and shut the noise down in the cage. Until that happens, the accusations — however juvenile — write themselves. A champion who's been sidelined by an eye poke doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from a contender who smells an opening.