YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Aspinall

lines on the record: 173
first: 2025-06-26
most recent: 2025-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm away training every day. I'm barely spending any time at home. When I am spending time at home, I'm completely exhausted from training. The kids have me up all the time. They're crying. My wife's not happy. I've got no money. I train all this time. Go to fight. Then it gets cancelled a week before. Do you know what I mean? That was really, really tough to deal with at the time.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Emasculated, if that's all right. I felt like I'm here with this wife and kids, and I ain't providing nothing. And that was really tough for me mentally at that time where I'm like, how am I going to provide for all these people? Like, I got to do something else because, and I felt, I don't think that people around me were... Tom's living in a dream world, he needs to get a proper job and earn some money for his family and kids. I don't think people, because there was a lot of people around me who actually believed in the dream as well, which is amazing. But I felt the pressure, I felt like people felt like that a little bit, even if they weren't saying it. So that, I think, for me was the toughest time for me, I think, is when just after I've had my kids.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had the twins, everything's great, and I had no money. And I mean, I didn't have any money at all. And I'm like living on this dream of me. Becoming this global superstar with these millions of pounds in the bank and with these titles and traveling. I'm living on that dream. I'm in Atherton in Greater Manchester. It's raining outside. I can't afford to put fuel in my car and I've got three kids upstairs crying. Do you know what I mean? That's what I was on. And I really felt like at the time. I don't want to say like I'm some big masculine guy or anything, but I felt a little bit.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've quit quite a lot of times, mate, to be honest, a lot of different reasons. Injuries Off very, very tough to deal with injuries as a professional athlete, not getting regular fights is also tough. See now, I'm like, was complaining to you a minute ago about, I've not got to fight this, that, and the other. But I'm going to get a fight. The thirst from the fans is there that the UFC want me to fight. But at one point nobody cared if I thought or not, and I had no money. And that, I think the toughest time for me was, so I had my first kid when I was 23. Wife was pregnant when she was 22, when we were 22. I had my first kid at 23. And then when I was 24, we found out that she was pregnant again, which I'm very happy about, of course. I don't want to seem like it's a negative thing, and that we're having twins.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've been spending your whole life doing it. Like, don't quit now. You know what I mean? There's been a lot of that from my dad. And I think a lot of other dads would have just been like, yeah, you've done enough now. You've tried your best. Just leave it at that. Whereas it's always been, you know, my dad's always believed in me. And my mum as well. Not just my dad. And a lot of close people around me as well, to be honest. I'm very lucky in that regard that people have pushed me to continue, which is great.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of that gone on. They say, don't they, something like it takes years to become an overnight success or whatever? And that's exactly what I'm dealing with, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Like you say, I've been going since I was eight years old. And the stuff that I've gone through in that time. I'm a massive believer in like just outlasting people like just being consistent and outlasting people a lot of the time overtakes anything else. But there's so many times, and a lot of it is down to my dad as well. He's like, I wanted to quit. And he's just reminded, don't get me wrong, I have quit a couple of times with MMA. Anna it's been like Tom I think you really need to think about this because”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got a good contract because I took the title fight on two weeks' notice. So I was in a bit of a position then where like I could kind of save the card. There's a title fight on the card. Somebody pulled out. They asked me to step in. So, you know, I was in a position that the UFC was kind of like needed me a little bit then. But to answer the question, everyone's different with that, but with the money aspect, it's like when you start becoming popular and winning fights, when people want to see you, basically, it's just as much about do people want to watch you fight. That's like a, it's not just about winning fights. Winning fights is extremely important, but... You've got to make people want to see you”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, he might have been. A different time there. Yeah, maybe he was. I don't know. Like I say, it varies from person to person, but from my experience, I came in. He's either 10 and 10 or 12 and 12. I can't remember exactly.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they re signed me for a bigger contract then, which is great. And then they do sign me for another four fights, and then you win a couple more in exciting fashion. And you can get bigger contracts. You don't have to stay for the four.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But if you lose, you just get in 10. Yeah, and generally speaking, like if you go 10 and 10, you win, you go 12 and 12, you win, you go 14 and 14, but you lose that one, you go back to 12 and 12. Does that make sense? But if you have an exciting style and the UFC like you, I'm very lucky because I'm from the UK and people from the UK get behind the fighters a lot of the time and I'm very lucky that I've got that myself. So I And ten, and then I think 12 and 12, if I remember rightly, and then they re signed me then because they had two first round finishes.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually, do four fights But the thing is, they can terminate that at any time. So if you're in like a fight that's boring, it's a bit of a stinker. Even if you win, they can just be like, yeah, we're done, done with that.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually it's 10 grand. And I mean, people's contracts are different, but I'm just speaking generally. People start off at 10 and 10. They get show money. Win money. So generally speaking, and this varies amongst, you know, if someone's got a career in another big organization, sometimes they'll sign in for more than that. But I was coming off a regional show, so I think I either got 10 and 10 or 12 and 12, I can't remember. But generally speaking, it's like you get your show money, which is between 10 and 15k dollars, and then you win bonus is double your show money usually. So 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 15, 50.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, yep. So. Like I progress through contracts and money quite quickly because of my style, but not everybody does so. Generally speaking, you get in the UFC you get what's called show money, which is your money to show up.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, they start off pretty good. I'm really lucky in the fact that I've got a fan friendly style. So people want to see me fight, especially heavyweights. People want to see a lot of the people who are not. They've not got a technically trained eye. They want to see two guys punching each other and one guy unconscious. That's the brutality of it, and that's the reality of it. And my style, generally speaking, brings that.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which at the time was quite a lot Would always recommend get as much experience as you can as an amateur before you move on to pro. But yeah, so as an amateur, I was obviously getting ticket money. So I'd sell, so the way it worked when I was fighting as an amateur at least, it was like, if you would sell a ticket for 30 quid, you would get a fiver of it so that the promoters would work off that like a low percentage thing going.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leon Edwards. I mean, there's definitely guys who have made a lot of money out of it. And have a good living, but honestly, like, I've been around gyms all my life, and I would say 95% of people have never made more than five grand for a fight.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would be very surprised. And that's one in forty decent level. Like, it's just so hard to make a living out of Evermade. There is absolutely no career path. To doing it really, especially in this country like it's getting tougher and tougher, and I'm trying to. I'm trying to raise as much awareness about MMA as possible. I want kids to be able to look at guys like me and other guys and be like, if he's making a career out of it, I can. But it is so hard in this country. That's why I'm doing as much as I can to try and get this thing as mainstream as possible.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in all honesty, a lot of the time I'm like. Have a backup plan because it's so difficult to make any money out of any, like I was saying I'm going to an event tomorrow actually. It's a local show. It's a great show, do you know what I mean? There'll be a couple of thousand people there tomorrow. And there's got a big fight card. Like there's maybe 20 fights on. So there's 40 fighters fighting tomorrow night. I'm going to it was chatting to my friend last night actually said, oh, is there anyone decent on the card? So yeah, yeah, there's a couple of guys on. He said, Oh, will anybody go to the USC? And we just got chatting about that and how that looks and how it looks to get in the UFC And I said to want it to be honest with you if one person out of the forty can buy a house from M”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love That's what I want to do. Yeah, that's what I want to be involved with. Yeah, that's why we do this thing. I have had a lot of fights. That nobody cared about in all honesty life. I've had a lot of fights. I think people don't realize like they see me and other guys at the top of the division. You know, we travel in the world, we're making money, we're winning titles, we're doing all this good stuff. Honestly, most of my fights, there was 100 people there and I came away with 100 quid cash and nobody gave a shit either way. Yeah, that's the realization of it. Like MMA is such a tough sport to like a lot of kids, not a lot of kids, but a lot of parents, if I meet a parent on the street, is kids involved in MMA or whatever. A lot of the time we'll say like, what advice have you got for them?”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I don't think that's going to happen because they are giving it that. It's definitely, in my opinion, there's a few massive fights to be made at the moment in MMA. But I think as far as thirst from fans. This is the one that people want to see the most”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, pretty much I am now like training. I mean I'm always training anyway. Training is a massive part of my life, but I could get a text at any moment telling me I'm going to fight in six weeks and that would be amazing.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All this is happening because I think when you are in those kind of situations, I know me personally, I start to conspire in my own, like that everyone's conspiring against me. Like, oh, this is not working out for me. And I start thinking negatively, but I think sometimes you just got to write down, like, this is going to be all right. Like, this is whatever's happening right now. I don't know what it is. And I don't know. I can't fix it personally because nothing to do with me. But I know it's going to end up all right and it's going to work out for me. So a couple of weeks ago, I remember just writing that down, putting it in the thing next to my bed. And sometimes when I'm waking up, I'm feeling a bit stressed. I'll just read it. Put it away and then that's it.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think I said to you off camera is like usually it's like, right, get off at a fight, work towards the fight, fight, fight's over, a little bit of downtime, another fight, work towards that, fight over, blah, blah, blah. Whereas now I'm just kind of like a little bit in limbo when I don't know what's happening. And I'm just like, oh. Usually, I'm used to having my life mapped out as to when I need to dedicate more time to this and what training partners come in there and what I need to focus on. But now I'm just in a little bit limbo where I don't know really what's going on. I wanted to really write down just to solidify that.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just like it's sporadically, really. It's not something I'm not the kind of guy who goes right at the beginning of the this is my visualization board or anything like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's just not what I do personally. I just, when I feel like writing stuff, I'll write it and most of the time I've got it in my bedside table or I've got it somewhere that I can see it and I'll pick it up. I'll read it a few times, the same sentence. I'll put it down and I feel like it's in there. I wrote recently that things are working for me. Because I'm in a really weird situation with my career that I've never really been before. Where there's a lot of politics involved in my kind of next move.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about visualization. People think about this like weird woo-woo kind of thing sitting there with crystals on you and weird music and meditate. It's not like that. It's as simple as getting a piece of paper, writing down. This week, I will do this and enjoy it. As simple as that, that's all I do. This year, I will win two fights. I will enjoy both of them and I will perform to my best. Just reading it every so often”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once these officials get out of the ring and they close that cage, we are going to fight. And someone is going to win, and someone's going to lose. Those are really special moments. And you have to enjoy them. Because when I'm 60 years old, and hopefully I've got grandkids and I want to be telling them about these special moments and not wishing them away and really, really enjoying them. And that's something that mentally I try and practice being in the moment and enjoying it a lot. And I feel like a lot of fighters, Just so stressed about the end result that they can't even focus on enjoying the self and the right now. And I know for me personally. When I'm enjoying myself, that's when I do my best. So I want to enjoy myself.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm closest to the end than I am in the beginning now. Definitely. I don't know when I'm going to retire. I have no plans to retire right now, but I'm definitely closer to the end than I am in the beginning. And the moments that we have, these walkout moments, these fear moments are being stood in the cage with another guy who stood in the cage with me. And we know that...”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can just see in my mind clearly. This is something that's programmed into me for years and years. It's almost like mental. See, in MMA, we have a term, and I don't know if this goes across the board, but we call it drilling. So if there's a technique, if you're practicing like I want to and you're doing it repeatedly, you call it drilling. You drill in a one-to-rilling is like repetition, repetition. I like mentally drill situations, so when you're talking about the walkout, when I'm physically walking out, mentally I've walked out ten thousand times before I've actually physically walked out. So by the time I'm there physically, I've been there so many times mentally that it feels quite normal to me. And then I constantly tell myself that I've got to enjoy it because I'm completely aware now, especially.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I work with a hypnotherapist, which I think is very important. Write stuff Have stuff where I can see it. I'll look at that a lot. Even stuff like, I'm just a massive daydreamer, massive daydreamer.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dedicated to me becoming the best version, an athlete of myself as possible. Now you dedicate in all that time to training physically. How much are you dedicating to mental, the mental aspect? And if you had asked mulse fighters, especially at the top level, you could talk in top 10 guys in the world, what do you think is the most important aspect, the physical side of the mental side? I will guarantee at least 50% of them guys, would say the mental side. Now, if you're comparing mental and physical, we're spending this much time on the physical side, but this much time on the mental side next to nothing. I could see a massive discrepancy in that and I wanted to bring the mental side up.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becomes about 80 plus percent mental. I remember somebody, I actually can't remember who it was. It might have even been on a podcast or something saying, look, we spend all this time preparing physically because to be an MMA fighter, you have to dedicate a lot of time. And I mean a lot of time to preparing physically. So that can be... I train around about between three and five hours a day, possibly on the physical training, and that's not to mention the stretching, the eating, the sleeping, the physio. All the other stuff that comes with becoming a good athlete. So I'm probably dedicating a solid. Most of the 24 hours a day, if you're going to count sleeping as well, which I believe is a part of being a professional athlete”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The gym warrior and the guy who's under the lights can be two different people. And I've seen it a lot over the years. I've seen it so much. I still see it now. Still see it all the time. See, when you train, this is my personal opinion. This is not facts, but this is my personal opinion I would say the training aspect is probably around 80% physical and 20% mental, the training aspect. Fight night when you are in that arena and you are you have got them bright lights beaming down on you and you can hear the crowd going crazy and you know that there's millions of people watching you you've got them tiny gloves on there's another massive guy stood across from me with his shirt off I believe it completely flips”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that if you're not, you're either lying to yourself or you're a complete idiot. Yeah. If you are going to sit in an arena and the arena's pack to the rims with twenty plus thousand people, and there's another guy over the other side of the arena waiting to fight you who's trained for the last ten weeks, and you've got to meet him in the center of the octagon with millions of people watching around the world and know that you can get separated from your own consciousness and you're not scared. You're either lying to yourself or you're just a complete idiot.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now that I understand fear and what it is and what it does for me, it just fuels me so much to do what I do. In MMA we have terms like a gym warrior people call it. Like someone who spars in the gym really, really well and then they get under the lights and they don't fight anywhere near what they do in the gym. Now generally speaking, that is because they don't understand fear properly. And I think I've got in a place where I completely understand that fear fuels me in a way that nothing else can fuel me and I'm completely comfortable with it.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm scared to fight everybody. Yeah. And I think that for professional... Combat athletes across the board, whether that's boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, MMA, whatever you're into. I think that's like a very, very taboo subject is like fear because everybody wants to be this big like, I'm a friggin' six foot five 115 kilo guy with like cauliflower ears and everything like tattoos the whole lot. It's pretty difficult to sit here and say like, I'm scared to fight anybody and like have that and be and be literally the number one heavyweight in the world. But kind of the realization of the fear that I've got.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody Want to fight anybody? I mean, I want to fight professionally. I love doing that. But I mean, as far as a confrontation with someone.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because fighting's a scary thing, at the best it's like, I'm the number one heavyweight in the world right now, and I'm scared to fight somebody. So I wouldn't like to be completely clueless because it must be so scary. And I think that it would be, I would recommend it to anybody of any age to do some kind of martial arts.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you need to, and I'm not saying you need to be a world champion, you need to train every, but you need to have a general idea of how to defend yourself if it ever happens. You don't need to be good. You don't need to have a fight. You don't need to be preparing to fight someone in a ring and a cage or whatever. But I think everybody should be comfortable with a general idea of how to defend the self if they need to. Whether that be if you own a house, if you have children, if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever, if you have somebody who you might need to protect who can't protect the self or something that you might need to protect, you need to have some kind of idea. On how to protect that, that's my opinion”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just think that it gives you just a massive structure in your life. And not only that, not to mention the stuff like, look, I'm not going to sit here and talk about crime rates or anything like that because I don't know the statistics. But I know that in this country especially, crime is pretty high right now. So my friend who's come with me is upstairs, Charlie. He does my social media and he's also a close friend of mine as well. And he's a similar age to me. He's 32. And he's literally just started training because I literally said to him like Charlie I say this to everybody who's not involved in martial arts.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me first of all start by saying I would be completely lost without it. I think everybody should do it honestly because I think that It puts your ego in check massively because you constantly, like every time you step onto a matter train, you get in hit in the face with reality constantly. And if you haven't been... Like for me, it's like you're getting hit in the face with reality, and if you're not consistent, that reality will hit you harder and harder each time. So it creates a sense of like a purpose in your life. You're almost like it's not fear, but it's like you don't want to miss because you don't want to get hit with the reality. Like you don't want to be inconsistent with your training because you don't want to be hit harder by the reality next time you go. If that makes sense.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just never know so I think my mum came because I was like, look, mum, I don't want to tell you to come or not come, but this is probably the only time I'm ever going to fight in Manchester. Like, I don't know how many fights I've got left. And I'm under the notion that I would rather retire a little bit too early than a little bit too late because I've seen the way people get late in the career and I don't want to be like that. I'm not saying I'm going to retire anytime soon, but I'm just saying like most of my fights are in the US now. And I don't think you'll ever have a chance to see me fight live again. So I think you should come to this one. And she came and apparently she enjoyed it.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's not that I didn't want her to. It's never been like her thing, so I would never be like, oh, mum, can you please come? Because I know it's, I know, like firsthand, even from teammates fighting how scary it is for me to be in attendance. So I would never drag along someone who loves me because it's horrendous, to be honest with you. Like, it's such an unpredictable sport that.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm already like number one in the world. I'm like, bloody hell, mum. You've left it this long. But yes, she just stays away from the MMA side of things. She is just a mum, which is great. That's amazing. She is really, really lovely person.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, she is the nicest woman that has ever walked the face of the earth. I think she is such a lovely person. Yeah, there is literally, you know, when someone says the term, oh, she's not got, or they've not got a bad bone in the body That literally applies to my mum, but as far as, so my last fight that had, which is in Manchester, my hometown, that was the first fight that my mum's ever been to.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be really happy, and I'd be like, I had a bad game, and I couldn't never shake that. I'd always like want to liked. Control, yeah, being in charge of my own thing, MMA in particular, is very much that. It's like, if you're not putting the work in, like you will get exposed, you will get your ego checked literally on a daily basis if you're not doing what you need to do. And I love that. Like it gives you a sense of accountability for. Just your everyday habits, like your thought process, what you're putting in your body, how much recovery you're getting, how many reps are you doing in the gym, everything, like everything is accounted for publicly. And I quite like that. I quite love that, actually.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The job is, and none of that stuff matters. Everyone just respects each other the same, and I was always drawn to that more than anything. That's why I always felt my most comfortable, especially because I was a bit more of a shy kid. I felt like I could really express myself through martial arts and something else about martial arts is like, because it's an individual sport. It's like always on you if you do well or not. And I realized the more time I put in, the more I got out of it. mentally and physically like I would get better the more I did it whereas with team sports especially rug because that's a team sport I've done the most like there would be games where I personally had had like an amazing game but the team had lost and I could see the next guy not trying as hard as me or sometimes vice versa sometimes they'd you know I'd had a terrible game but the team had won and everyone”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I definitely tried all that stuff. I definitely mean my area is quite a big rugby area. So rugby league we play up there. I definitely delved in that a little bit, but I just never really was my thing, you know. I think because my dad and my brother was heavily involved with martial arts. And that's just where I always felt like safe to a degree. He's like in the gym. I know it sounds really weird. But I felt like when you're involved in martial arts, it's almost like there can be 10 guys in the room and they can all be from different backgrounds. Male, female. One guy can be 12 years old, the other guy can be sixty-five years old. One guy's retired, the other guy's at college. One guy's black, the other guy's Chinese. It doesn't matter. Like when you're in there, it none of that matters. And everyone just respects each other and gets on regardless of race, gender, age.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like a couple of the guys who I trained with, like I said, I was like 11, 12 years old. And I remember a couple of the guys, like, it became a lot more physical training, like it became a lot more competitive, whereas before they were just letting me do my thing. And then they started fighting back a little bit more. And then I remember thinking, well, I must be all right. If they're trying, I remember realizing that people actually started trying against me and then they finish around and look like they'd done a workout a little bit rather than just played with a kid, if that makes sense.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do remember a few instances like I said I used to train with adults even when I was a child. And I was quite aware, even from being young, that the adults were like taking easy on me. You know, like they were letting me get position and letting me do certain things on them and they weren't really trying as much. And I remember. Feeling like the adults are starting going harder on me. If that makes sense, does that make sense? I remember I used to just have all my own way in training because the adults a lot of the time were like my dad's friends and his students and then I would always be around the gym so they'd know me and they'd take it easy and stuff like that. And then I remember.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's difficult to say because I had like a bit of a blurred line as to where I started, actually training martial arts. So I started training when I was young. It was my dad's thing more, and I just used to go when my dad'd like to spend some time with my dad because I didn't really have much else to do. But I used to always go down to the gym. And when I started training, there were no kids classes. Like now you can go to the end of the road and there'll be an MMA gym with kids classes on with 20 kids in the class. That wasn't my case when I started at eight, nine years old. Like I used to go to the gym. There used to be 10 40 year old guys rolling around on the floor with each other. And I just used to jump in when there was a smaller guy available otherwise. I'd just be like kicking the football around the gym or something like that. Basically I've grown up in gyms. But when I actually started training seriously, that was probably when I was like 14, 13, 14, something like that.”
2025-06-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Aspinall: The UFC Doesn't Want You To Know This! Jon Jones Wasn't Living Like An Athlete! · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT