The legendary two-weight UFC champion has been refraining from giving Aspinall his chance at unifying their undisputed and interim titles. Instead, he has teased retirement and super-fights with Francis Ngannou and Alex Pereira over the last year.
Asked by Bloody Elbow, he refused to answer questions regarding his future seriously, instead opting to promote tomorrow night’s Dirty Boxing Championship event in Miami. However, he did say that if Aspinall made the trip to a Dirty Boxing event, he would finally get the fight.
Following the ceremonial weigh-ins for tomorrow night’s DXB 2 event in Miami, Bloody Elbow attempted to ask Jon Jones questions about his fighting future. Instead, he jokingly answered all media questions by insisting that he would tell all at tomorrow night’s show at the Hangar.
However, when asked if he would change his mind on fighting Tom Aspinall if he were to come to a Dirty Boxing event, Jones replied: “Yes, you’ve got your quote right there.”
It is believed that Jones asked for a record purse in order to fight Aspinall in a title unification that would be the biggest in heavyweight history. The UFC obliged, but he seems to still not be interested in making the fight happen.
For the last few weeks, he has been in Thailand filming a reality TV show with Nate Diaz and internet sensation Hasbulla. But he returned to America this week, and has been regularly trolling fans on social media since.
During the UFC 316 post-fight press conference on Saturday night, promotional CEO Dana White dropped a major bombshell when he told the media that Jones had accepted a fight with Aspinall. However, it has since been reported by Ariel Helwani that Jones went back on that agreement.
Jones claimed when asked by Bloody Elbow that he hadn’t heard White’s comments, saying: “No, I did not [see Dana’s comments].” When told that he had said Jones accepted the fight, he asked “Is that what he said?”
White told the press on Saturday: “Yeah, I’ve been saying it since the beginning, Jon Jones agreed to do the fight. Jon Jones was offered the deal and accepted the deal.”
White dropped such a massive piece of news bombshell as if it were nothing, so someone in the room asked him to clarify. “Jon agreed to fight Tom, yes,” he reiterated.
“You guys have heard me for the last however long, I said, ‘I guarantee this fight is going to happen.’ Yes, I’ve been saying Jon is gonna fight Tom.”
