I did not ever imagine those words be said during a UFC interview but here we are…
Tom Aspinall is still riding high after his first round knock out of Sergei Pavlovich last Saturday to secure the UFC Interim Heavyweight Championship. At some point he’ll be taking on the actual champion Jon Jones once he recovers from a shoulder injury suffered in training, but for right now, the title of Baddest Man on the Planet goes to the 30 year old from Salford, UK.
Naturally, once the belt is around your waist you get a lot on media attention and most of your time after the fight is spent doing interviews, one of which was just posted by Nina Marie Daniele, who’s put herself on the top of UFC content creation of late with a number of strange but highly entertaining interviews done with Middleweight Champion Sean Strickland and Light-Heavyweight Champion Alex Pereira.
As far as her content goes, this on the surface one was a pretty standard interview, sitting presumably at the UFC headquarters in Las Vegas for what looks to be a typical exchange of fighter and reporter.
But, as you may have guessed, this turned out to be anything but.
In fact, she barely asked any questions about fighting at all and tried to get him to give some funny answers to ridiculous questions like “Are you participating in NNN” (if you have to look it up that’s on you), “What’s your favorite color”, and some submitted by fans like “How do you feel about airline food” and choosing between “Only pooping once a month or diarrhea everyday”.
At one point, Tom really gets hit with just how ridiculous these questions are and decides to turn the tables on Nina and ask a wildly out of the box question.
I mean, like a completely out of pocket question…
“I’ve got a question. Have you ever been fingered by an MMA fighter before?”
WHAT…
I watched this so many times before accepting that was really what he said, and confusion we obviously Nina’s response as well:
“Fingered? No…”
Then, just when you think it couldn’t possibly go any further, Tom follows up with:
“What would it take?”
Tom, what are you doing?!
Nina keeps asking questions to make sure they’re on the same page (which they were) and eventually says no, she never would and the conversation moves on.
Now, before we get all up in arms, while it may go a bit far, this is the type of stuff that comes up in her interviews and she rolled with like a champ, but my goodness that hits every listener like the 1-2 combo that sent Sergei Pavlovich tumbling to the canvas a few days ago.
Truthfully, I don’t know how to end this blog. That comment stunned my brain and I can’t come up with any other words for the situation.
Shoutout to Nina for rolling with it and laughing about it in the moment and in the comments (she was okay with guys, I promise), but man, I’m still stunned.
Here’s a short clip of the exchange.
You can watch the entire interview here as well. This happens towards the end at about the 19:30 mark.
