UFC legend walks back Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall claims, says new challenger has emerged

A member of the “Fight Wing” section of the UFC Hall of Fame is now hearing that Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall isn’t the next heavyweight title fight after all.

Fans have grown tired of waiting for the UFC heavyweight title picture to move forward with an undisputed championship fight. Aspinall has held the interim title since Nov. 2023. Jones and Aspinall have the same amount of title defenses, but their matchup still hasn’t been booked.

While fans were excited to see one UFC legend claim the fight was all but a done deal, it turns out that isn’t necessarily the case.

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Jones vs. Aspinall Not Happening Next?

Initially, Chael Sonnen claimed that Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall was agreed to. Now, the current analyst is saying the plan is for Aspinall to put his interim gold at stake against Ciryl Gane. He cleared things up in a new video on his YouTube channel (h/t MMAMania.com).

“I’m here to tell you, according to a remarkably good source, Jon Jones is going to be afforded the ability to wait 180 days, which is equivalent to six months, which is what he asked for,” Sonnen continued. “Tom Aspinall is going to fight with Ciryl Gane, which was, in fact, on the table many months ago and then Ciryl was gifted a decision in a fight that he lost against [Alexander] Volkov. That’s the way the story happened. And now we’re going to defend an interim champion with the existence of an undisputed champion, which is against the laws of logic and the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of champion as well as undisputed as well as interim, but we are going to adhere to the one thing that we do consistently: We are going to closely follow the rules that we make up as we go.”

Jones last stepped inside the Octagon back in Nov. 2024. He defeated Stipe Miocic via third-round TKO to successfully retain the UFC Heavyweight Championship. After the fight, “Bones” showed more interest in fighting Alex Pereira than Aspinall. After Pereira lost the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship to Magomed Ankalaev, the attention was back to Aspinall.

BJPenn.com will continue to keep you up to date on what’s next for Jones and Aspinall.