Kenny Florian isn’t surprised that Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic are only focused on fighting each other.
Jones and Miocic were supposed to fight in November but the heavyweight champ suffered an injury and was forced to pull out. After that, the UFC made an interim heavyweight title fight between Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich, which Aspinall won by first-round KO.
Since then, Aspinall has been trying to secure a fight with Jones for the unified heavyweight title, or Miocic, where he would be defending his interim title. However, Jones and Miocic have shown little interest in that fight which doesn’t surprise Florian.
Kenny Florian understands why Jones & Miocic don’t want to fight Aspinall
“Those guys have won the belt many times over, they’ve been part of some of the biggest UFC events in history,” Florian said on Believe You Me. “You know, huge names, and I think that for two guys that have been at their level, have been in the sport for so long, for them it’s probably more worth it to say, ‘Hey, let me face another legend that’s right around my era. That can bring in a lot of money for me…’
“I don’t think they see that same advantage in as, say, Tom Aspinall. Right, Tom Aspinall doesn’t, probably, click all those boxes. Tom may very well be more different than both of those guys, he might. If I’m a legend at the end of my career, I don’t know if they want that fight to be against Tom Aspinall,” Florian continued.
Kenny Florian believes Tom Aspinall deserves to fight either one of those guys and would like to see that fight happen. But, the former UFC fighter understands why both Jones and Miocic don’t have much interest in it as they are legends who likely only have one fight left in their career.
With that, Florian expects Jones and Miocic to fight each other and both likely retire after the bout, which will leave Aspinall as the heavyweight champ.
