- Tom Aspinall doubled down on his desire to take on Jon Jones
- The interim heavyweight champ wants Stipe Miocic while waiting for “Bones”
Tom Aspinall is not interested in anything else at this point and just wants either Jon Jones or Stipe Miocic at the highly-anticipated UFC 300.
Jones or Stipe only
Speaking to TNT Sports, the interim heavyweight champ explained why a unification bout with Jones should happen sooner rather than later. For Aspinall, MMA is not like boxing where there can be more than one champion in a weight class. Therefore, the UFC should consider unifying the heavyweight title ASAP.
Aspinall understood that “Bones” need some time to recover from his injury and with that, he is open to facing Miocic for now. But ultimately, Aspinall wants to fight both of them.
“Ideally, I want Jon Jones next. I feel like we need to unify the title right now,” Aspinall said. “There’s two heavyweight champions of the world and, in my opinion, this is not right. This is not boxing. You don’t have multiple champions in a weight [class]. You have one champion in my opinion. He’s a champion and I’m a champion right now. We need to unify that, we need to find out who the best guy is, but right now Jon Jones is unavailable.
“The other available guy, who is ready to fight for the title, is Stipe and I think it just makes the most sense. It’s not rocket science,” he added. “We are talking about Jon Jones, who people say is the greatest fighter of all time. We got Stipe, who people say is the best heavyweight of all time – I want their names on my resume and I want to be in the win column.”
Others can wait
Aspinall knows that the UFC is sold on the battle for GOAT status between Jones and Miocic. Nevertheless, he insists that he has also fought his way up to deserve a fight with the pair.
“I think I’ve got years to fight these other guys, and it’s inevitable that I’m going to fight them. But I’ve got a short window to fight Stipe or Jon Jones and I want to explore that opportunity while I can,” Aspinall explained. “I know that Dana [White] and the UFC brass want to do the legacy fight – let’s call it – between Jones and Stipe, but it’s my job to convince him otherwise. I’ve got a belt now for myself. Let’s do it. Why not?”
Aspinall also pointed out that other heavyweight contenders can wait but he doesn’t have all the time in the world to face Jones and Miocic. Preferably, he wants to make it happen at UFC 300.
“I think UFC 300 works perfectly,” he added. “I think that is like April or May time. I have just had two fights in three months so a little bit of down time and then straight back into training. I am already back training. I was training five days after I just won the fight. So, I’ll be ready to go around UFC 300. That’ll be perfect. Or I know there is talk about bringing the UFC to Manchester in June or July time. So, that works equally as well.”
Aspinall won the interim heavyweight title after knocking out Sergei Pavlovic at UFC 295. He aims to be the best heavyweight of all time but he knows he had to beat Jones first.
Check out Aspinall’s full interview below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ug0wcfoFX4
