Jon Jones eyes apology to Dana White for the Tom Aspinall situation: “I was wrong”

Jon Jones isn’t actively speaking to Dana White right now, but ‘Bones’ does seem to want to make amends for some aspects of how the infamous Tom Aspinall situation played out.

Speaking to Zayd Hussein of the No Scripts Podcast, the former two-division UFC champion mentioned this while also outlining what he wants for the next step as ‘Bones’ eyes a massive fight. Despite retiring from MMA and vacating his heavyweight crown, where Tom Aspinall was upgraded to undisputed champion, Jones is proving the old adage that MMA retirements are not long-lasting.

Rumblings of a desired fight with Alex Pereira in the Summer of 2026 have come up, and in an excerpt from the overall podcast posted to X account @ChampRDS, Jones said,

“I think my most immediate goal is to try to be on the White House card… I’m giving Dana his space. Dana has changed my life. He has changed my life. He has changed my children’s lives. I’m forever grateful to him. We had a verbal agreement that didn’t go over well. Nothing was finalized. I do admit guilt; not guilt. But you know, I was wrong… The way things went down, I was wrong.”

“I wish that I could see him face to face and just apologize to him. So that we can let bygones be bygones and get back to making some major money for the sport and really entertaining these fans… When he’s feeling me, I think I’m one of his favorite fighters. When he’s not feeling me, I’m probably the reason why he has a bald head.”

Jon Jones fires off a shot at Tom Aspinall post-UFC 321 eye poke

Jon Jones also managed to get in some digs at the aforementioned Tom Aspinall following the latter’s inauspicious heavyweight title fight outcome. At UFC 321, Aspinall was poked in the eye, and the resulting no-contest had some calling for eye-poke reform in the sport, while some attacked the UK fighter for supposedly not having valor.

Jones seemed to defer to the latter perception as he tried to make the case that Aspinall has shown a prior instance of quitting within his fighting endeavours. On the same podcast appearance referenced above, Jones mentioned that he thinks when the UFC heavyweight champion gets hurt, he is incapacitated right away. ‘Bones’ mentioned that if he were in a situation like that, he would do everything he could to blink away the damage and continue the fight, implying Aspinall did not have a champion’s resolve.

Jon Jones also touched on the first Curtis Blaydes bout Aspinall had, as Jones felt that there was no limping or attempt to get up. Also, Jones touched on an early heel hook loss in Aspinall’s MMA career pre-UFC, as he felt like Aspinall did not even attempt to hand fight and went right to submitting.