Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall is not a done deal after all, according to Chael Sonnen.
A day after claiming that the highly anticipated heavyweight championship unification bout is “is agreed, all the way down to the date,” Sonnen is now walking back that claim in classic Sonnen fashion. The three-time UFC title challenger explained on his YouTube channel it was his understanding Jones would fight Aspinall next, but now sees another hurdle standing in the way of that matchup.
“OK, I might have said that,” Sonnen said. “I also did believe that to be true, so I do remember—I might have said that. It would be real easy to know, I film everything and put it out. But one thing I do know I told you word for word for word for word, I told you Tom Aspinall’s next fight is done, but I don’t know that it will be against Jon Jones. I then told you if Jon Jones fights again, Jon Jones’ next fight will be against Tom Aspinall. I told you that.”
Instead of Jones, Sonnen expects Gane—a former interim champion himself—to get a shot at Aspinall’s interim belt.
“The current plan right now, Tom Aspinall vs. Ciryl Gane for the interim championship,” Sonnen said. “Now, I will back the moves. I will back the moves with full integrity in place because our overarching theme, our constitution itself within the sport of MMA is we fiercely adhere to the rules that we make up as we go. So, I’m on board and I like anything that ends in world championship.”
The convoluted heavyweight championship scene came about as a result of Francis Ngannou parting ways with UFC in 2023 with the belt still around his waist. A new champion was soon crowned with Jones jumping up from light heavyweight and making short work of Gane at UFC 285. However, an injury forced Jones out of a scheduled title defense against Stipe Miocic eight months later, which led to Aspinall defeating Alexander Volkov for an interim title.
Since then, both men have defended their belts, with Aspinall avenging a loss to Curtis Blaydes at UFC 304 and Jones beating Miocic in their rescheduled bout at UFC 309. Jones has repeatedly shot down any talk of an Aspinall fight, criticizing his opponent’s credentials despite Aspinall sporting an 8-1 UFC record while Jones has only competed in the heavyweight division twice.
Like it or not, Sonnen claims if fans are going to ever see Jones fight Aspinall, the pressure is on Aspinall to put on another strong performance first.
“Not only are we going to have both [an interim and undisputed champion], we are going to contend for a second time the interim championship,” Sonnen said. “But we’re going to do it for the first time in the presence of our undisputed champion and we may or may not be doing that in nine weeks at International Fight Weekend.”
“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 added. “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.”
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