Tom Aspinall reveals he’s been soaking his knuckles in petrol every day ahead of UFC 304

UFC interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall has been using some unconventional training methods heading into UFC 304.

As we know, Tom Aspinall will defend the UFC interim heavyweight championship at UFC 304. He’ll do so by going head to head with Curtis Blaydes, a man who defeated him in seconds when they last met due to a knee injury. Now, the Englishman is back, and he’s ready to send a message to the rest of the division.

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Aspinall hasn’t been afraid to let his personality shine across the last few years. He’s slowly but surely becoming a real fan favorite, which makes sense, given how exciting he is to watch inside the cage.

In a recent interview, however, he took things down a different path when explaining what he’s been doing with his knuckles prior to training.

Aspinall’s strange routine

“You ever see the documentary Knuckle? You familiar with that? It’s a documentary about travelers, traveling communities in the UK island. And there’s a guy on there, big Joe Joyce, an old traveling legend, and big Joe Joyce reveals a few gypsy methods for getting ready for a fight,” Aspinall said Monday on The MMA Hour. “I wanted to resort back to a bit of gypsy heritage that I’ve got, so I thought, right, what I’m going to do is I’m going to make a little ring out of hay bales.

“When it gets to about 4 a.m., I get my alarm on, I go outside, do a bit shadowboxing in the hay bales — and then I do the old traveler method of dipping your knuckles in petrol for about 20 minutes as the sun’s coming up, and that hardens your knuckles.”

“These are some of the hardest knuckles in the UFC right here right now,” Aspinall said. “They’re like rocks.”

Quotes via MMA Fighting

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