For nearly a year, UFC’s heavyweight division has been represented by two champions.
Jon Jones holds the 265-pound limit’s main title, which he gained back in early 2023 against Ciryl Gane. But late last year a new interim belt, currently held by England’s Tom Aspinall, was also brought into the mix.
The interim championship was used as a way to keep the division moving while Jones would recover from a torn pec and then return against Stipe Miocic. Like all interim belts, the assumption was that the title would eventually give Aspinall the chance to unify with the other champion.
Jones and Miocic are expected to finally collide this weekend, ending a more than year-long wait for the duo to face off. However, even with that fight soon out of the way, it remains unclear when Aspinall could get a title unification bout. What’s more, recent comments from current top champ Jones have made it seem like the odds of a fight between them are slim.
Jones, a long-time light heavyweight champion who moved up to the heavyweight division in 2023, saw a fight against Aspinall as high risk, low reward.
“He does nothing for me,” Jones said during the UFC 309 media day this week. “If you’re a person that wants to see me really challenged, then I get it. Seven years younger, 35 pounds bigger than me. I get it, it’s like ‘Jon’s so good, we finally found someone way younger and way bigger than him.’ I get that narrative.”
While Jones walked back prior comments about Aspinall not “deserving” a shot against him, he described an appetite for other matchups. When weighing the factors of age, size, and success, Jones thought a fight against current light heavyweight king Alex Pereira might be next for him, if successful on Saturday.
“If you were my manager, if you were on my team, why not fight against [Alex] Pereira, a guy the same age as you, and we walk around [at] the same exact size,” Jones questioned to the press.
Jones’ disinterest in an Aspinall fight calls into question how the heavyweight division’s title picture will look if he wins on Saturday. Aspinall has already become just one of three UFC interim champions to actually defend their title before receiving a unification fight. If he has to put his title on the line once more while waiting for a shot against the champ, he will become the first fighter in the promotion’s history to do so.
Jones pushed back against the idea that not wanting to fight Aspinall is his way of “ducking” a challenge. He described that the promotion has never confronted him about a unification fight thus far, meaning he has yet to side-step a fight in the weight class.
“I feel like narratives have been created that just truly aren’t there,” Jones claimed. “You can’t duck a man that you were never scheduled to fight. It’s like saying you got turned down by a girl you never hit on. Me and Dana and Hunter have never sat down and talked about Tom Aspinall. He was never on my radar. Never.”
It does seem like the promotion hopes to eventually make a title unification fight. UFC CEO Dana White recently told TNT Sports that he expects the winner of Saturday’s main event to go on and face Aspinall before retiring: “They’re not going to just ride off into the sunset without settling the dispute with Tom Aspinall,” he said.
The issue of a champ-versus-champ clash at heavyweight might be an issue for Jones to solve in the future. However, his appearance at Madison Square Garden this weekend against former champ Miocic is front of mind for now. While Jones enters the fight as a massive favorite, with sportsbooks listing him as high as -600, it would be getting ahead of things to discuss what is next before he even steps into the cage on Saturday.
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