Tom Aspinall is keen on getting the heavyweight division moving again after making a bold declaration regarding how active he wants to be throughout 2025.
The UFC heavyweight title saga between Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall might finally be over with the interim champion seemingly done with waiting for the return of Jones.
Jones recently claimed that he, Aspinall and the UFC have an agreement in place and that they were leaving it to the promotion to announce, which got fans excited thinking it was regarding fight news.
Despite that, Aspinall came out shortly after, claiming that Jones is retired and that he has a date for a different fight.
Tom Aspinall makes bold claim that he’ll fight twice this year
At this point, fans have become infuriated with the UFC’s lack of communication regarding the potential heavyweight title unification fight, not only because it is keeping the division on hold but because it is potentially wasting Aspinall’s best years.
And with that, the Brit has decided to officially give up on waiting for Jones to return and has declared that he will fight twice this year as he attempts to keep the division moving.
“I’m sick of talking about myself, I mean, I think it’s pretty clear to see that Jon Jones has retired, he doesn’t want to fight me. We wish Jon all the best in the future, of course, but we want this heavyweight division active,” Aspinall told TNT Sports.
“We want to give these contenders a chance to fight, we wanna have a defending champion, don’t we? Why is this division so stagnant all the time? Let’s make the heavyweight division great again and have an active defending UFC heavyweight champion, let’s move on.
“I’m ready to fight, I wanna get two fights in before the end of the year so that’s what we’re doing. We finally have some movement, Jones has had a great career, I respect him, we know what he’s done… Have a good life, we move on,” he continued.
Who will Tom Aspinall fight next?
Currently ranked number two in the heavyweight division is Ciryl Gane, who is coming off the back of a win over Alexander Volkov.
Aspinall and Gane have been linked to fight before but the Frenchman turned down the fight as he wanted a fight up the rankings, when Aspinall was ranked lower than him.
However, Aspinall has also previously talked about potentially fighting Alex Pereira in the future, and following Magomed Ankalaev’s recent claim that the Brazilian has turned down a rematch against him, fans are hopeful that ‘Poatan’ could imminently move up to heavyweight.