UFC 309: Jon Jones deserving of criticism amid mounting list of excuses for why he won’t fight Tom Aspinall

From the files of having your cake and eating it, too, it has been difficult to come to terms with Jon Jones’ self-narrative of late as the often reclusive UFC legend has resurfaced in the media cycle entering just his second bout in a span approaching five full years. 

Jones (27-1, 1 NC) will make the first defense of his heavyweight title on Saturday at New York’s Madison Square Garden when he headlines UFC 309 against former champion Stipe Miocic (20-4), who is widely considered the most accomplished heavyweight in promotional history. 

The fight, despite its historic intrigue, has been heavily maligned by a large sector of fans and media due to UFC allowing it to be delayed an additional year after Jones suffered a pectoral tendon tear. This has not only held the division up while forcing interim champion Tom Aspinall to stay on the outside looking in, it hasn’t helped from a marketing standpoint that Miocic, 42, has been idle for nearly four years and hasn’t won a fight since 2020. 

Jones, 37, has spent most of the last year teasing a possible retirement after UFC 309, which only angered critics even more regarding the UFC’s decision not to force Miocic to fight Aspinall during the 20 months since Jones last fought. But the biggest problem with Jones’ stance on retirement was that his story has continued to change with each passing interview. 

From a public relations standpoint, the past week has been a disaster as Jones has verbally contorted himself into a pretzel in order to justify his ever-changing reasoning behind why Aspinall (15-3), the 31-year-old native of England, who has laid waste to the heavyweight division in Jones’ absence by knocking out one top contender after another (often in the opening round), is simply not deserving to fight him. 

In fact, it was Jones’ injury last fall that opened up the door for Aspinall to fight for the interim title to begin with, on the same MSG card at UFC 295 that Jones was originally scheduled to fight Miocic. Aspinall went on to destroy divisional boogeyman Sergei Pavlovich in just 69 seconds before defending the interim title this July by obliterating Curtis Blaydes nine seconds quicker.

But what started out as Jones simply saying the Aspinall fight offers nothing to him in terms of legacy, thus the reason why he kept teasing a retirement should he defeat Miocic, has now evolved into a stance that is growing more convoluted by the moment now that Jones has introduced he does want to continue fighting but only if that means a superfight against 205-pound champion Alex Pereira.

So, does this mean Jones is officially ducking Aspinall? At UFC 309 media day on Wednesday, Jones once again defended his case. 

“I feel like narratives have been created that truly aren’t there,” Jones said. “You can’t duck a man that you were never scheduled to fight. It’s like saying you have been turned down by a girl that you never even hit on. I get that Tom is an exciting fighter and I get that, finally, after 16 years we have found somebody who is seven years younger than me and 30 pounds bigger than me. We finally found someone who may give me a great challenge and everyone wants to see it so bad. But for me, it’s like, what is in it for me?

“Fight the nobody [Aspinall] that may be more dangerous or fight the guy [Pereira] with all of the accolades who is incredibly dangerous but it will actually affect your legacy. Me beating Cyril Gane didn’t do anything for me, it just gave me a few more millions. It would be the same for Tom Aspinall. When you look back and it’s, ‘Jon just beat Alex Pereira,’ it would be bigger, it would just be bigger and anybody who can’t understand that logic simply doesn’t want to.”

The biggest problem with Jones’ reasoning is that for a fighter who is looking to cement the status of MMA’s best fighter in history after a nearly perfect run to titles in two UFC divisions, he isn’t acting very much like a G.O.A.T. In fact, Jones’ behavior of late has resembled a different animal comparison: a duck. 

If Jones really was looking for one more fight on Saturday to walk away from his career on his own terms, few would have issue given everything Jones has accomplished. But the more you listen to Jones change his story, the less it begins to make sense. 

Jones has gone from saying Aspinall doesn’t deserve the fight and he would only continue his career for a “legacy fight” against Pereira to suddenly introducing a new narrative after Wednesday’s press conference when he spoke with The Score’s Aaron Bronsteter.

“After this fight, if we get a dominant performance, I’m prepared to vacate the heavyweight championship and fight for fun,” Jones said. “I’ve had a big chip on my shoulder my whole career of having to defend [UFC titles] … I want just random fights like Jamahal Hlll, me and him meet up at 220 and just see what happens. That would be interesting to just see what happens. I’m at an interesting weight where I could fight heavyweights or light heavyweights. Derrick Lewis, who is the biggest knockout puncher in history. I just want to do fun fights for me. Let’s see if Dana allows me to do that or not.”

Hill, a former UFC light heavyweight titleholder, was knocked out in less than a round against Pereira in April. Lewis, meanwhile, is just 3-5 since 2021 with four stoppage defeats, which makes it hard to understand how either could add to Jones’ legacy. 

But that’s not even the half of it. 

When Jones mentions the seven-year age gap between him and Aspinall, he’s forgetting it was the same gap between himself and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in 2011 when a 23-year-old Jones set a record by becoming the youngest champion in promotional history after demolishing the future Hall of Famer despite having less total wins or victories against ranked fighters that Aspinall currently has. 

Jones also talked about a supposed 30-pound weight advantage Aspinall would hold over him, which also fails to make sense considering Aspinall weighed 251 pounds before the win against Blaydes in July while Jones weighed 248 pounds in his 2023 vacant title win over Gane. Jones is trying to take a boxing approach to his stardom in a promotion where champions are almost never afforded the opportunity to pick and choose (like, say, Floyd Mayweather in his prime, for example) unless it’s in the UFC’s best interest from a business standpoint to do so (which it clearly was for Jones-Miocic).

Despite being the greatest fighter to ever step foot in the Octagon, Jones has also been, simultaneously, the biggest cautionary tale of an athlete who is lucky to still be in the position he is in despite years of egregious missteps outside the cage (from felony arrests to failed drug tests and disturbing domestic violence issues), including having been stripped of titles a UFC-record three times. 

“I just beat Cyril Gane and we can go back in a time machine and hear the way that people talked about Gane with his athleticism and his speed, and what he did to Tai Tuivasa,” Jones said. “And then as soon as I beat him, it’s that he wasn’t all that.”

What Jones (and even White) conveniently fail to mention is that Gane entered the vacant title fight against Jones having already been solved by a one-legged Francis Ngannou in a 2022 title loss. Then, one fight later as a heavy favorite against the limited Tuivasa, Gane took a ton of surprising damage before rallying to score a late stoppage. 

When Jones speaks to fans just wanting to find someone who can compete against him, he’s also overlooking the second half of his career, which saw him vacate the 205-pound title in 2020 following a pair of disputed decision wins over Thiago Santos and Dominick Reyes where it became clear the new generation of light heavyweights had caught up with him. 

Jones, who announced a move up to heavyweight that fans had been waiting on for most of the previous decade, then went on to sit out three full years while publicly fighting the UFC over money. This coincided perfectly with Ngannou’s takeover of the division, which included a one-sided beatdown of Miocic in their 2021 rematch where Ngannou captured the UFC heavyweight crown. 

The fact that it took until Ngannou exited the UFC in 2023 as a free agent to sign with rival PFL for Jones to finally return simply can’t be overlooked.  But when pressed by media members Wednesday about how much Jones had put down everything Aspinall has accomplished and claimed he wasn’t deserving of a unification, his story suddenly changed. 

“Maybe I didn’t phrase it right. The truth is, [Aspinall] does deserve many great things in his life and I wish him a magnificent UFC career, I really do,” Jones said. “I have nothing personal against Tom. It’s not about what Tom deserves and doesn’t deserve, I believe it’s what I deserve. And after this many years with this company and all the work that I have put in, I believe that I am at a place where I am needing to say, ‘I don’t want to fight that guy, I want to fight this guy.’” 

“One way I look at it is, would you guys rather lose me or get one more superfight? The only superfight that makes sense to me — and not to everyone else but to me and my team — is Alex Pereira.” 

If that were Jones’ final stance on Aspinall, things might make more sense. But just a few moments later, during the same media sitdown where he said it’s nothing personal against Aspinall, Jones switched his story … again. 

“If I’m being completely honest, I feel like Tom is such an asshole that I don’t want to do business with him,” Jones said. “His fans have been so annoying. Obviously, you don’t get this far in your career being affected by fans but he’s just an asshole. He’s 30 so he’s from this influencer generation where you hop online and the t-shirt sales, and all that. I’m past that type of stuff. It’s like, ‘Hey bro, maybe if you would have had a little bit more respect we could have worked something out.’ Fighting me gives him the opportunity to change his life forever and I don’t even want to give him the opportunity. He just played his cards wrong with me, personally. 

“Pereira, on the other side is respectful and cool and barely says much. I will do business with you. I would risk it all with a human being like you. And you actually have the accolades to back up your shit. This other guy is just a big mouth who is hot today but there have been other guys who have been hot today and are now gone.”

All one has to do is look back at UFC 304 in July to see the comedy of Jones’ stance considering Aspinall called him out after the fight in quite literally the most polite way possible. 

But if there was a chef’s kiss moment to Jones’ wild media day, it came immediately after the festivities ended, with Jones scheduled for a sitdown with UFC media partner TNT Sports from the U.K. Jones walked in for the sitdown and shared pleasantries with host Adam Catterall before immediately standing up and exiting. 

“Hey, I’m not going to do this interview,” Jones said. “You know, because it’s going to be an Aspinall fest, I’m not going to do it.” 

Jones can do what he wants after UFC 309. But his constant lust for appreciation following such a tumultuous career and his ever-changing reasoning for his provocative statements have done nothing but attract justifiable criticism during a time when the narrative should be centered upon everything he has accomplished. 

In this case, that’s on Jones.