Tom Aspinall is back, and he’s ready to head in the direction of Jon

Tom Aspinall always figured that when his right knee eventually gave out, it would happen in the practice room. Probably during a wrestling or grappling session. There’d be a shift of weight in one direction or another, and his partially torn meniscus would lock up the knee and cause more damage. And whenever that happened, he’d deal with it.

He never once pictured it happening the way it actually did.

One year ago, Aspinall (12-3) suffered the first loss of his UFC career when his right knee buckled as he threw a kick at Curtis Blaydes just 15 seconds into their heavyweight main event inside London’s O2 Arena. Aspinall, 30, immediately fell to the ground in pain, and the bout was waved off as a TKO.

“I never thought it would happen in a fight,” said Aspinall, who had competed for three years with the injury, which occurred during training. “The weirdest thing about it was that my knee locked. That’s happened a few times before, definitely, but it happened when I was grappling on my knees. It would never happen when I threw a kick. That was the first time it happened with a kick.”

Aspinall, of Salford, England, returns to the Octagon on Saturday (ESPN+, main card at 3 p.m. ET, prelims at noon) for the first time since he underwent surgery on a torn MCL and damaged ACL. He’ll face Poland’s Marcin Tybura (24-7) at the O2 in front of 17,000-plus, no doubt some of whom were in attendance one year ago for his disastrous result against…