Interim UFC heavyweight world champion Tom Aspinall recently got some grappling training in with former professional rugby player Ugo Monye. Grappling and rugby actually have a lot of crossover, and there have been plenty of top competitors in either sport with experience in the other. In fact New Zealand rugby legend Tana Umaga is a BJJ black belt, elite BJJ competitor Owen Livesey has a background in rugby prior to turning to grappling as a career. Monye himself doesn’t have any competitive grappling experience, so this footage is actually an interesting look at how naturally a lot of the relevant movements come to rugby players.
Monye spent his entire professional rugby career from 2002 to 2015 playing for Harlequins and made several international appearances representing England. He even appeared for the British and Irish Lions during their 2009 tour of South Africa, playing in two games. Ugo Monye actually retired as a rugby player in 2015 and has since become a popular pundit and presenter, which is actually why he made the journey to train with Tom Aspinall and review his first title-defense against Curtis Blaydes at UFC 304.
After breaking down his first-round knockout win over Blaydes, Aspinall showed Monye how to perform a single-leg takedown. They then took part in some positional sparring rounds working off that single-leg entry and although it was done pretty light-heartedly, neither Aspinall or Monye were giving anything up for free. Monye was able to show some fantastic balance and actually performed very well considering he was training with one of the best MMA fighters in the world. Aspinall isn’t just any MMA fighter either, he’s a BJJ black belt with catch wrestling experience and he’s become known as one of the most well-rounded fighters in the heavyweight division.
The full footage of Tom Aspinall grappling with former professional rugby player Ugo Monye was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of TNT Sports:
