Tom Aspinall’s path to becoming UFC heavyweight champion was long, unglamorous, and very poorly paid. Speaking on his own podcast, the Manchester-born star gave documentary maker Louis Theroux a candid look at the financial realities of life on the local MMA circuit, and how love for the sport kept him going through years of earning almost nothing.
Aspinall first stepped into combat sports as a young child. “I started training when I was around 8,9 years old,” he told Theroux. Before MMA was even an option, he competed in the individual disciplines that would eventually come together to define his style.
“I had some boxing matches, some wrestling matches, grappling and all that stuff,” he said. By the time he turned 16, he had reached the legal age to step into a cage and compete in MMA properly, which had been his goal all along.
What followed was nearly a decade of competing for almost no money at all. On the local circuit, Aspinall said, athletes simply do not get paid.
“We were getting 500 quid for a match, which is not enough,” he explained. Over ten years of competition, from 16 to his mid-twenties, the ceiling on his earnings barely moved. “From 16 to 26-27, the maximum I ever got paid was 600, 700 quid for a match. So for all that time I didn’t make any money at all and the prospect of making money was actually quite slim.”
Six or seven hundred pounds, at various points over that period, equated to somewhere between $700 and $900, never clearing the four-figure mark. For years of training, cutting weight, and stepping into a cage to be hit, it was a sum that most people would consider well below fair compensation.
Yet Aspinall kept going back. And the logic, as he pointed out to Theroux, is straightforward. “So that must mean I did enjoy it and I still do enjoy it. I still absolutely love MMA.” He was quick to add, though, that his affection for the sport has never translated into fearlessness. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare me to death, because it absolutely does.”
