According to our deal ol’ Uncle Chael, Tom Aspinall will defend his interim UFC heavyweight championship for the second time this summer.
It’s been nearly 18 months since Aspinall won the temporary title via a vicious 69-second KO over Sergei Pavlovic. Sadly, we’re no closer to seeing the Brit unify his belt with Jon Jones‘ undisputed heavyweight crown today than we were that night back in November 2023.
Things appeared to be finally trending in the right direction with Sonnen claiming that Jones vs. Aspinall was a done deal behind the scenes, all the way down to the date.
Now, ‘The American Gangster’ is pulling a complete U-turn, stating that a scrap between Aspinall and former interim titleholder Ciryl Gane is now the plan with International Fight Week being earmarked for the time and place.
“The current plan right now, Tom Aspinall vs. Ciryl Gane for the interim championship,” Sonnen said on YouTube. “Now, I will back the moves. I will back the moves with full integrity in place because our overarching theme, our constitution itself within the sport of MMA is we fiercely adhere to the rules that we make up as we go. So, I’m on board and I like anything that ends in world championship.
“Not only are we going to have both [an interim and undisputed champion], we are going to contend for a second time the interim championship. But we’re going to do it for the first time in the presence of our undisputed champion and we may or may not be doing that in nine weeks at International Fight Weekend” (h/t MMAmania).
Sonnen reveals why the UFC’s biggest heavyweight fight of all time fell through yet again
Why such a sudden course correction? As Sonnen explains, Jon Jones was granted the six months of prep time he’d reportedly requested to prepare for a fight with the Brit.
“I’m here to tell you, according to a remarkably good source, Jon Jones is going to be afforded the ability to wait 180 days, which is equivalent to six months, which is what he asked for,” Sonnen continued. “Tom Aspinall is going to fight with Ciryl Gane, which was, in fact, on the table many months ago and then Ciryl was gifted a decision in a fight that he lost against [Alexander] Volkov. That’s the way the story happened.
“And now we’re going to defend an interim champion with the existence of an undisputed champion, which is against the laws of logic and the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of champion as well as undisputed as well as interim, but we are going to adhere to the one thing that we do consistently: We are going to closely follow the rules that we make up as we go.”
Jones has only fought twice since 2020, the first time being his title-winning performance against Ciryl Gane at UFC 285. He followed that up with a third-round TKO over Stipe Miocic to defend the heavyweight crown 20 months later.
If Sonnen is to be believed, it sounds like we won’t see ‘Bones’ back inside the Octagon until November 2025, at the earliest.
Needless to say, fight fans are going to be furious if this proves to be true.
