Jon Jones is going to fight Tom Aspinall, and until he hears otherwise, Dana White promises to deliver that matchup in the near future.
That’s the latest from the UFC CEO as he reacted to the most recent back-and-forth war of words between Jones and Aspinall as the highly anticipated fight remains more rumor than reality for now. Over the past week, Aspinall went as far as declaring himself undisputed champion while wishing Jones well in retirement, and then Jones responding by saying he doesn’t really care if the UFC decides to take the heavyweight title away from him. Jones then expressed interest in potentially facing Francis Ngannou next.
It’s a whole lot of noise, but White says Jones has already accepted the offer to fight Aspinall, and it’s just a matter of getting the deal done.
“I’ve been saying it since the beginning. Jon Jones agreed to do the fight,” White said at the UFC 316 post-fight press conference. “Jon Jones was offered the deal and accepted the deal. Jon agreed to fight Tom, yes.
“You guys have heard me for the last however long, I guarantee this fight is going to happen. This fight’s going to happen. You guys told me the crazy shit that’s going on Instagram, and all these other places, but yes, I’ve been saying Jon is going to fight Tom.”
Now White admits he hasn’t seen all the messages unleashed by Jones over the past week, which included his interest in the Ngannou fight, but he’s not losing much sleep over the context related to what happens on social media.
“Probably not,” White said on Ngannou’s chances of returning to the UFC.
If Jones has changed his mind and he’s serious about not fighting Aspinall ,or perhaps never competing again, White can only do so much to get the reigning UFC heavyweight champion back in the cage again.
That said, White isn’t giving up hope on making Jones vs. Aspinall just because of the latest exchange between the two fighters.
“I haven’t been keeping up with the gossip,” White said. “[Jon Jones is] either back today or came back yesterday or whenever, he was in Thailand. He’s home. We’ll be home tonight and Tuesday, we’ll figure this out.
“Tom Aspinall’s the guy. He’s the guy. Listen, if [Jones] wants to retire, and doesn’t want to fight, nothing you can do. I didn’t want Khabib [Nurmagomedov] retire. I thought [Daniel Cormier] could have stayed it in longer. It’s none of my business. I’ll do what I can to make the fight if we can. If he’s talking that crazy shit, I didn’t realize that.”
Of course, White acknowledged that any time he’s ever worked to put a fight together with Jones that it takes a little extra effort but that’s nothing new to him.
“It’s definitely the process with Jon Jones,” White said. “I’ve been going through this since the day he started this. It’s definitely the process. Him and Anderson Silva, every time throughout the history of being in business with those guys when it comes time to get them fights, it’s like dealing with artists. It’s interesting.
“It’s Aspinall’s fight. We’ve been talking to this kid forever about it and it’s his fight. Listen, you can’t make people fight. If Jon doesn’t want to fight, you can’t make him fight. We can try to make him fight. We can throw things at him that inspire him to want to fight but we’ll figure it out.”
White also reacted to the online petition that got started about the UFC stripping the heavyweight title away from Jones so that Aspinall could move on as undisputed champion.
Jones joked that he hoped the petition reached 200,000 signatures but even that number won’t force the UFC’s hand when it comes to a decision about the title.
“Every human on Earth was DM’ing [the petition] to me,” White said. “Yeah, I saw it. How many fans are there worldwide? There’s like 400 million or something like that. 130,000 people want to see him stripped. It’s kind of f*cking silly.”
For all the rumors circulating and the non-stop chatter between Jones and Aspinall online, White remains confident that he’ll eventually get a deal done, which is at least part of the reasy why he’s not paying much attention to the outside noise.
“Unless you hear it come from here or we put out a press release, don’t believe any of this bullshit,” White said. “Unless we come out and say something, it’s all bullshit. I just don’t get sucked into that stuff anymore. I don’t even care. I don’t even listen to it and most of the time, the shit that I hear, I hear from you guys when I come to things like this.
“Otherwise, I don’t care and I don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. But yes, Jon agreed to fight Tom, fact.”
