Tom Aspinall's dad on what the heavyweight star was like at school, the ONLY way Ciryl Gane can beat his son at UFC 321 and glaring problem with White House event

About 20 years ago, Andy Aspinall did what many fantasise about - he gave up the rat race to pursue his passion project. 

He packed in his well-paid IT manager role, sick of office politics, and set up a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school with a view to one-day giving his talented 12-year-old son a job teaching on the mats. 

A couple of decades down the road and that leap of faith has returned more than he could have ever imagined. 

To say his ambitions for that 12-year-old have been exceeded would be ridiculously underselling it. 

Tom Aspinall is a UFC heavyweight superstar with the kind of freakish all-round ability to mark himself out as the most talented fighter of his generation. 

He faces French rival Ciryl Gane this Saturday night at UFC 321 with father Andy in his corner, as ever. 

'I couldn't have imagined back then the different kind of life I have now,' Aspinall Sr exclusively told Daily Mail Sport. 

'I did 25 years in IT, 14 of those freelancer just hopping around being mercenary getting as much money as I could and the last five after 2000 they gave me a manager's job and I'd just had enough of the rat race, didn't like it. 

'Contracting was good when computers first came out, you could write systems and enjoy it. When it got to the point you inherited a lot of staff, office politics all the time, I just made a decision. 

'I'd got enough money for between five and ten years to just have a go at something else and I was teaching jiu-jitsu anyway and Tom was 12. I just decided to do that an nobody was teaching jiu-jitsu here (St Helens) so I just set off teaching as many people as I could, with a view to thinking, Tom was good, he might be able to get a job working with me if we build it up enough. 

'I've got another son who is very capable as well so it could be a family thing that we could do and then it just went from there.'

Aspinall's formative years spent honing his craft soon translated to other disciplines - wrestling, striking and then boxing. 

The mastery of all those disciplines in a 6ft 5in athletic frame has seen him finish all-but one of his victories in the UFC within the first five minutes. 

He is the most fearsome man in the most fearsome division of the most fearsome sport. 

You'd think that would be recipe for an absolute nightmare teenager packed full of aggression and pent up energy. 

But Andy says of all the pupils to pass through the school, the same one that Tom's children now attend, he would be the last the teachers would have picked to be a fighter, let alone the 'baddest man on the planet'. 

'I never had to give him a telling off,' he explains. 'Tom was the nicest boy ever. My wife works in the admin department of the school he went to and his kids go to now - out of every kid they've ever had in the school, they said he'd be the one he'd pick last to be a fighter. 

'He never had any aggression in him whatsoever at school, ever. Never any aggression at home. 

'But when you tell him there is a contest and it is better to win it, there's something inside him that does that. He'd be like that with family games of Monopoly and his kids are like that as well, his eldest lad will cheat his way out of anything to win and he's the nicest kid as well and apparently I was the same. 

'I'm not one of those types of people who has to win at all costs, I'm not a pushy guy, I never pushed him into doing it, it's just what he does and it's his thing, the thing we've done together since he was very small.'

So what's it really like watching you child, albeit now a rather large one, risk his safety in a cage with fellow behemoths? 

For Andy, watching Tom spar a prime Tyson Fury in the boxing gym has made everything since seem far less daunting. 

'I never feel any different really, we've done this for a long time now,' he reflects. 

'He's 32 and started fighting when he was about seven and it was just local competitions we were going to. Then he did MMA and went to boxing and train with Tyson Fury, sparring two or three times a week. 

'Nothing is more frightening that sparring with Tyson at the level he was at then and that never bothered him one bit, he used to love going and sparring and I just think the fight is a hyped version of what you do really.  

'Fighting Ciryl Gane will be no harder than the five rounds he did the other day when it's five different people being thrown at him and he doesn't know which direction they're coming from and he still has to get up off the floor. 

'He's done it for so long and had the fights at that level that they all bother him and they all bother me but you're not going to avoid it, it's going to happen so there's no point in getting too worked up and fighting two people, you're fighting him at 10:30pm, don't fight him from 6:30pm onwards. 

'You'll either win or lose and hopefully you'll come out ok, get paid and go onto the next one, he's just doing the hardest part of his job, if you like. Now he's got to go and cut the lawn, put the roof on, whatever it is. He does it every day.'

The matter of fact, down to earth mantras of the father are reflected in the son. Aspinall's remarkable lack of ego in a sport swimming with them has been to his advantage. 

It's fascinating to hear Andy speak about training as 'programming', as if all those years developing computer systems have translated into developing the killing machines in his gym. 

He adds: 'You can give Tom different looks and programme him to do stuff, like being on the back foot and stopping a takedown, going forward for a whole round, he can do that. Get on his back three times and strangle him.

'You train specific things for specific people but anything can happen, Tom might forget he's supposed to throw something when he moves his head a certain way so for me you just have to programme the body what is drilled into them when they're in the fight. 

'If they see the head move, kick it, if they lunge in and you can take them down, take them down. He's well rounded, we're never bothered about the opponent because he knows how to defend everything.'

So what does the master tactician make of Gane, the powerful Parisian with a fluid striking game?  

'He's not a knockout guy who is going to smash everybody,' he surmises. 'He waits until they get tired and when they get tired he has a go if he's hurting them. If he's not hurting them he doesn't even have a go I don't think he'll be able to do that against Tom. 

'He'll be hoping to drag him into the last round but Tom is fit as a fly. People never see that but he's also go that ability to shut your lights out in a second and I don't think Gane has got that. Until you're in a room with Tom and you're locked up with him, you don't really see what he can do. 

'Does Ciryl really want to have a fight with him? Because you didn't want a fight against Derrick Lewis or Jon Jones. If you're going to have a fight with him, you'll lose, if you want to flick about with him, you'll probably lose as well.

So what chance does Gane have? 

'I just don't see a way of Gane winning apart from some spinning stuff Tom might not see and gets cut or hurt,' Aspinall Sr says. 

'If someone said Tom could fight Volkov or Pavlovich again, I think I'd have said, "fight Gane it will be easier", because he just doesn't seem to hurt people like the other ones hurt them. 

'I'm not saying the odd punch won't hurt because it will but he's used to taking punches, but Gane's not abrasive enough to bother him.'

Even though Andy is dismissive of Gane's chances, he is crystal clear on Tom's own route to victory being on the ground.  

'100 percent,' he agrees. 'Tom is really good on the ground and hasn't really shown it yet. He's had a couple of submissions but has never had to fight on the ground and roll around and do stuff. He's always been a superb finisher. At wrestling he always used to pin people, he had loads of jiu-jitsu matches and submitted everybody he ever fought, a few boxing matches and he just beat people in boxing to make them give up. 

'It's not so much his jiu-jitsu now on the floor, he's just very well balanced and hard to get off and we've got good people in the gym and he dominates when he wants to. A lot of big people go into gyms when they're big. Tom came into gyms when he was tiny. 

'He's been the nail for a long, long time and now he knows what the nail feels like... he's just very good and getting better. For me as a coach, I see he's getting better all the time and the gap between him and other people keeps growing and sparring partners will tell you that. 

'They'll say, "I can't believe how quick he is", or "how good is his left hook getting",  He won't try and do stuff to win rounds in the gym, he'll do stuff to get better. We've drilled for years and years not to try and win sparring, it's not important. When the money is there, go for the money in the fight, when it's not there, try and get better.'

Now that Jon Jones has retired and ended the tedious will-he-won't-he with Aspinall, the heavyweight landscape is there for the Brit to take over for years to come. 

Jones had talked up a return for next year's UFC White House card, so would Aspinall be interested in a spot on what is being billed as one of the biggest events in the promotion's history? 

'It is a hyped up location and probably nice to look back on but it's just another fight and I think Tom would think that,' suggests Andy. 

'Tom's fought at home in Manchester, which is what he really wanted to do - he did want to fight in front of a home crowd and win. It was a good win that he'd lost out on last time because he got injured. He was really happy doing that. 

'I think an arena fight would be better than a White House fight. 100,000 people is better than however many they'll fit at the White House. How are they going to replicate an atmosphere with, say, 5,000 people? 

'The old one on Yas Island was like a big tent wasn't it. It might be like that on the White House lawn, the atmosphere can't get that good in there so I don't think as a fight it would... it appeals because of 250 years of America and blah blah blah but to me, no it's no different.'

The lack of sentimentality is an Aspinall trait to the core. 

There's no doubt Tom is a chip off the old block - pragmatic and ruthless with a quiet but burning will to win. 

He's been developed - programmed - as Andy would say, for maximum efficiency and output. Maybe those years in the rat race weren't entirely misspent after all. 

Tom Aspinall vs Ciryl Gane is the headline fight at UFC: 321 Aspinall vs Gane live on Saturday 25th October at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. To find out more about how to watch the fight on TNT Sports Box Office click the link here