Dana White has always been adamant that a long-awaited heavyweight title showdown between Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall will happen, but now he seems to be backing off that stance, while indicating that a final decision could be made by the beginning of next month.
“I don’t know, we’ll see how this thing plays out over the next couple weeks,” White revealed to Jim Rome when asked if the fight was going to happen. “If we can’t get this fight done, we’ll move on quickly. I said a couple of weeks. We’ll have answers in the next couple weeks.”
Despite the fact that it could be argued that Jones has essentially kept the heavyweight division hostage by only defending his title once since winning it back in March of 2023, White is keeping his cool for now, and insists that Jones isn’t the kind of fighter who ‘ducks’ opponents.
“Listen, Jon Jones has been an interesting human being to deal with since the day he got here. But I will say this about him, you would never hear me out talking about he’s the GOAT and he’s this and he’s that if Jon Jones didn’t want to fight people. Jon Jones has never ever said ‘I’m afraid to fight this guy’ or ‘I don’t like this fight for me’ or any of that stuff.
“One time, his coach at the time back in the day, I don’t know if he’s still with him or whatever — I think it’s the only fight we ever cancelled, had to cancel a show because of [this] — but he wouldn’t fight Chael Sonnen because his coach thought it was a bad idea to take that fight on late notice. But it had nothing to do with Jon Jones. Jon Jones has never turned down an opponent here or been afraid to fight anybody.”
The reality is that this situation has dragged on for far too long now, and so hopefully this two week deadline is enforced and we finally get some clarity on what’s actually going to happen by the start of July.
