Jon Jones taunts Tom Aspinall as old rival gives up UFC title

Jon Jones has taunted Tom Aspinall after the Briton vacated the UFC heavyweight title, more than a year after Jones did the same to avoid facing Aspinall.

Aspinall gave up the belt on Monday due to ongoing complications with an eye injury, which was caused by numerous eye pokes from Ciryl Gane last September, when the Frenchman challenged Aspinall for the title.

Aspinall’s fight with Gane was his first defence of the undisputed belt, after he was elevated from interim champion when Jones vacated the regular title last July. Jones retired at the same time.

Jones, 39, only vacated the belt after a long saga in which he refused to give up the strap or fight Aspinall, despite the latter holding the interim title for a year. Jones even admitted to turning down $30m to fight Aspinall.

And the American has seemingly found some satisfaction in Aspinall being forced to vacate the gold.

Taking to X, Jones first replied to a user named The Honest Jones Fan, who wrote: “This confirms that his ‘injury’ wasn’t that big of a deal and the UFC was confident that he could defend his belt in due course. Aspinall however knows he can’t beat Ciryl Gane so took the easy way out. Absolutely shameless!”

Jones replied: “My sentiments exactly.”

The retired two-weight champion then wrote, “Ouch,” in response to a user who had tweeted: “Tom Aspinall never deserved the undisputed title to begin with. Yet you have people acting like he was some heavyweight phenom bc he beat [Sergei] Pavlovich 3 years ago.

“He was no more than a great white hope for people who wanted to see Jon Jones lose. He didn’t want the Gane rematch & now he’s going to blame the rest of his failure of an mma career on Ciryl Gane.”

The same user added: “Jon Jones gets brutally fouled by Ciryl Gane in the first 30 seconds [of their fight in 2023], never complained & then demolished him 2 mins later. Tom Aspinall gets fouled quits then cries about it for a year before finally giving up the belt. They’re not the same, here today gone tomorrow.”

Jones responded: “Dude you are on fire.”

Many took issue with the sentiments that Jones endorsed, however.

One user wrote: “Aspinall finished [Curtis] Blaydes, [Alexander] Volkov, Pavlovich, and [Serghei] Spivac. He is a FAR better Heavyweight then [sic] you and you wasted 2 years of his career dropping down 10 rankings to defend against Stipe Miocic because in 10 years people will forget Miocic was a 50 year old retired grandpa.”

Another said: “Guy who utilised eye pokes as a key to victory his whole career can’t understand how someone not being able to see would be compromised.”

And another user made reference to Jones’s numerous failed drug tests and arrests outside the cage. Indeed, while some fans see “Bones” as MMA’s greatest-ever fighter, others hold his legal issues and drug-test failures against him.

Despite some fans questioning the legitimacy of Aspinall’s eye injury, the Wigan heavyweight underwent multiple surgeries in a bid to restore normal vision, only to re-injure his eye while training this summer.

The fresh injury occurred after Aspinall had agreed to a comeback fight, which likely would have come against Gane, who won the interim title in June.