Interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall has admitted that having to wait indefinitely for a chance to unify the title against current kingpin Jon Jones is taking a toll on him mentally.
In a candid new interview on MMA legend Demetrious’ ‘Mighty Cast’ podcast, Aspinall goes as far as to say that the wait has been more difficult for him than spending a year out with a knee injury a few years ago.
“I had the big injury and then I was at a bit of a crossroads really,” Aspinall told Johnson of the freak knee injury he suffered just 15 seconds into a fight with Curtis Blaydes back in 2022. “Like I’d made a little bit of money then, I’d made enough to buy a house and stuff, and then it was like, do I want to carry on with this thing?
“It was obviously devastating to get injured in front of everybody and stuff. But anyway, it was a tough time for me. Came back, took me a year with the rehab with the knee and everything… the physiotherapy and all that kind of stuff. So it was a tough couple of months mentally, but the once I started working towards getting back, I’d see the doctor, I’d see the physio, they’d be like, ‘In two weeks, this is what I want you doing in the gym. I want you squatting down to 90 degrees. I want you to be able to jump on this box. I want you to be able to run a mile and then you can start boxing, you can do this, that.’ I always had a little goal to work towards.
“So after a couple of months of being sat on the couch, as soon as I could get in the gym and start working towards different things, it was great and I felt good, I was like, ‘I definitely want to come back. Now I’m going to go, I don’t have any injuries, I’m going to win the heavyweight championship, I’m going to become this legend, I’m going to knock everybody out’ and all that stuff, I felt great about it. And I was on my recovery path to getting back.”
Compared to that, Aspinall says that being stuck in limbo waiting for a fight with Jones that may or may not happen at some undetermined point in the future is much more challenging to cope with mentally.
“Now, I’ve been almost a year inactive with no prospects of anything apart from wait,” Aspinall said. “So now it’s actually a bit more of a tricky time for me mentally than it was then. Even people then were like, ‘Are you OK? How are you dealing with coming back?’ and stuff like that. I was like, yeah, I’m good. I’ve got this to look forward to, the doctor said I’ve got to do this in two weeks or in two months I can start grappling. I constantly had little goals to work towards. Whereas now it’s just like, ‘Just be ready and we’ll just let you know.’
“It’s kind of difficult mentally, but this is the fight against Jon Jones. The fight is another thing, this is the tricky bit where I really have to stay switched on, stay motivated, and I’m trying my best. It’s tough sometimes.”
Meanwhile Jones, who turns 38 in July, appears to be revelling in playing mind games with Aspinall, and the reason he has this power over him is that so far the UFC brass appear to have put no pressure on the champion to defend his title.
As long as that continues then Jones will be in no hurry to return, and so with Aspinall having already defended the interim title twice, there’s now increasing calls from fans for Jones to be given an ultimatum to either fight him or be stripped of the belt.
For his part Jones doesn’t seem concerned about that at all, having laughed off a comment about it this week.
“Stripped? Lol do I come across as the type of person who cares about things like that?” Jones said while in Thailand.
And according to Jones, the UFC already knows what his intentions are.
“I told the Ufc my plans a long time ago. I have no clue why they haven’t shared them with you guys yet,” Jones claimed to a fan on social media.
To that point, Dana White has always been adamant that Jones vs Aspinall will happen, and recently claimed that the current heavyweight champion will fight again this year.
However, we’ve also seen Michael Chandler sit out for years waiting on a fight with Conor McGregor that was often promised but never delivered, and so it’s not hard to see why Aspinall is very unsettled at how things are playing out.
