UFC star Kevin Holland came to Jon Jones’s defense for allegedly wanting at least six months to prepare to fight Tom Aspinall.
UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones remains in negotiations to fight interim titleholder Tom Aspinall later this year. According to UFC CEO Dana White, negotiations are in the final stretch, and an announcement is looming.
While there’s a lot of good news for fight fans regarding Jones vs. Aspinall in recent days, the fight might not come to fruition as quickly as most want it to. As reported by MMA journalist Ariel Helwani earlier this month, Jones wants at least six months’ notice to prepare for Aspinall, which would eliminate any chance of Jones vs. Aspinall headlining the UFC’s annual International Fight Week card in June.
Jones’s reported desire for a long camp infuriated some fight fans eagerly waiting for the heavyweight title unification bout. But Kevin Holland, who is one of the most active fighters on the UFC roster, surprisingly came to Jones’s defense.
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Kevin Holland defends Jon Jones’s request for six-month camp to fight Tom Aspinall
During a recent appearance on Michael Bisping’s Believe You Me podcast, Holland defended Jones’s reportedly playing the long game for the Aspinall fight.
“I’m going to stand up for him a little bit,” Holland said of Jones. “The dude’s been around for a very long time, and he’s fought a lot of people. Tom Aspinall is an absolute beast. Jon Jones, is the greatest to do it in his timeframe, and now he’s actually doing it in a different timeframe. Probably should be Tom Aspinall’s timeframe. If I’m Jon Jones, I’m going to play it like a Floyd Mayweather, like these old-school boxers played it. I’m going to be the OG of the game.
“Yeah, we may not like it, it sucks, we want to see the fight tomorrow. But the older I get, the slower I play the game,” Holland continued. “If I’m Jon Jones, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure Tom Aspinall understands how powerful and how dominant I’ve been over the years, and all the things I’ve done. So that by the time it comes for us to fight, he’ll be so f***ed up inside your own head, and it’ll be rough. Hopefully Tom doesn’t fall for that!”
Holland was then asked how he’d suggest Aspinall handle Jones’s ongoing delays to sign the dotted line, and proposed a surprising solution.
“If I’m Tom, I want all the experience I can get. Every benefit that I can have going into a fight with a guy like [Jon Jones],” Holland answered. “I want the guy to be so scared of me, instead of me being scared of that guy, that there’s nothing he can do…Jon Jones has proved he can sit down for a certain amount of time and still f— somebody up! I don’t want to sit down for a long time and become a supreme athlete. I want to keep going and do my thing.”
Aspinall defended the interim heavyweight title against Curtis Blaydes at UFC 304, after earning it against Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 295. After defeating Blaydes, Aspinall assured the UFC brass that he wouldn’t defend the interim title again, and would wait as long as it takes for a shot at the undisputed belt.
Jon Jones offered $50 million to fight former UFC heavyweight champ
In the meantime, Jones remains adamant about fighting at least one more time in the UFC Octagon, likely against Aspinall. But a win over Aspinall could potentially force Jones to entertain the possibility of fighting another former UFC heavyweight titleholder.
PFL founder Donn Davis made headlines this week when he offered Jones $50 million to fight Francis Ngannou. Jones and Ngannou were in brief talks to fight in 2021 and 2022, but negotiations stalled after Ngannou’s tense contract dispute with White and the UFC brass.
Jones and Ngannou faced off at a PFL event in 2023, stoking speculation about a potential superfight coming to fruition. But White isn’t interested in a cross-promotional venture, and has high animosity with Ngannou going back years.