When "Big Hit" met the Octagon: Tom Aspinall’s growth from BTS academy kid to UFC headline king!
right, when he was still just a skinny kid with a mop of hair shuffling round the beltside cage at bts academy, now look at him—reclining in that octagon chair like he owns the place, headphones in, chin up, ready to pull the whole show off with one swing. seen that boy grow up in our front room really, wasn’t it? his dad’s got a proper story about tommy doing one-arm press-ups between sessions when his back still ached from the minibus ride home, but he never let it slow him down.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
still had the bts academy teeshirt from when tommy was 12 tucked in the back of my wardrobe when his split over volkov dropped 😱 watched that on my mates bloody nokia brick cos i’d just finished shift at 3am and saw it go down — next day i framed the clip and hung it over the kettle so every brew i made for the lads had that knock-out right in their faces
Heart with the team, head on pause.
ever so fond of that one time he was rolling up his sleeves for sparring at bts with some grown man twice his size hanging off one arm while some old codger on the bench goes, "that kid's got more fight in his pinky than half these heavyweights in here" — i remember him just looking up like he hadn't even heard the cheek, kept going, and then knocked the lad out proper two minutes later. still got the photo tucked in my wallet, next to the volkov clip. that boy's always been a law unto himself.
Seen it all, lads.
chuffed me nan still thinks tommy’s that skinny 12yo kid in the bts academy teeshirt — she printed it off a facebook page in 2016 cos she couldn’t work out how to screenshot and called it “proper modern art”. framed it in a biscuit tin with a post-it: “our tommy, future champ ✨🔥” — last week i swapped it for the volkov clip cos i needed more room in the tin for biscuits and she didn’t even notice, just chucked another custard cream in and said “cheers love, still got that blessed look on his face” 🤣🍪