Now that Tom Aspinall has officially been installed as the UFC’s heavyweight champion following Jon Jones retirement, the ex-interim champ is now looking to get the top end of the division moving again by fighting twice in the remainder of the year.
“It’s going to be soon,” Aspinall said of his first title defense in an interview on UFC.com. “If things work out, I’d like to fight twice before the end of the year.“
Aspinall also admitted that while he’s happy to now have achieved heavyweight champion status after a long stint as interim champion, he would have rather have fought Jones to earn that status.
“To be honest, I would have rather fought for it, of course. I did defend the interim which is a weird thing as well. I always saw myself as the champion anyway. I think the whole Jon Jones thing is a bit weird. Everybody can see that was a very strange situation, but luckily now that is in the past and we can move on.”
“Obviously I had an inkling that Jon Jones was going to retire and they’re going to move forward and I’m going to be the champion. I would have rather fought for it. I would rather take the title from the champion, but I honestly believe that I was already a champion in may own right anyway… I’m just relieved that it’s over and we can move forward.”
While Aspinall’s rise to become champion was far from ideal, ex-middleweight champion Israel Adesanya has spoken out to assure him that he fully deserves to have it, having already won the interim title by KO’ing Sergei Pavlovich, and then having to go through the unusual additional step of then defending it against Curtis Blaydes, who he KO’d in 60 seconds.
“The interim title means something,” Adesanya told Aspinall on his YouTube channel. “If Rob [Whittaker] had beat me it would have been a title defense for him. When you beat and defend your belt, it is a defense, never let them take that away from you.”
