Tom Aspinall is, by many people’s assessment, the best heavyweight in the world right now. The problem he currently has, however, is the man with the title has shown next to no interest in ever facing him.
After a long layoff, Jon Jones moved up to heavyweight and beat Cyril Gane to capture the vacant undisputed UFC heavyweight title, then, rather than position himself to face the division’s top contenders, instead set his sights on a fight with 41-year-old former champion Stipe Miocic.
But, while the matchup between two of the best of their generation makes sense as a legacy fight, the matchup still hasn’t been officially booked, and the heavyweight division is operating in almost a separate universe to Jones and Miocci right now.
The champion in that universe is Tom Aspinall, who holds the interim title – a belt he won with a first-round knockout of Sergei Pavlovic, then defended with another first-round finish, this time of Curtis Blaydes.
Throughout his run, Aspinall has respectfully said that he feels that he’s now ready to face, and defeat Jones in a title unification bout. But despite the growing clamour for the pair to face off, and Aspinall’s willingness to make the fight happen, it’s been very quiet from Jones’ end.
By any sporting measure, Jones vs. Aspinall is the obvious fight to book, but Jones’ silence on the topic, coupled with the UFC’s insistence on eventually booking Jones against Miocic – whose last win came four years ago at UFC 252 – has led Aspinall to become more vocal in his frustration, and, as reported by RG.org, he delivered his coldest assessment yet as he took aim at Jones for his apparent unwillingness to face him.
“Jon Jones, he was praying that I would lose that fight against Curtis Blaydes – praying that I would,” Aspinall told Michael Bisping and Anthony Smith on the Believe You Me Podcast.
“Because there’s nowhere that you find publicly, nowhere, him saying that he would fight me. It doesn’t exist. I challenge everyone watching this interview to find a statement, a quote, a video, where Jon Jones is saying that he’ll fight me after he fights Stipe. It doesn’t exist. The guy is smart.
“We know he’s a bit overweight these days. The guy was sat there with the Cheetos fingers, or whatever, the Doritos on fingers, with his iPhone in his hand, waiting for me to get knocked out so he can start tweeting about it, let’s be honest.
“And, since I won that fight, he’s been completely quiet. And he’ll continue to go completely quiet about me until he retires, because there’s no way on earth that he’s going to fight me. Not a chance.
“I will retire Jon Jones without even fighting him.”
