I wanted to believe UFC CEO Dana White as soon as he uttered the words.
It almost felt like a revenge mission for the fight that never happened between Jon Jones and Francis Ngannou. When Ngannou parted ways with the company in 2023, it was the biggest lament of the storied African heavyweight’s tenure with the promotion. UFC had both “Bones” and “The Predator” on its books for years and couldn’t land the one fight an entire sport begged to see.
It was mid-December when White made the bold proclamation, roughly a month after Jones predictably outperformed the great Stipe Miocic to defend his heavyweight title. Despite that marquee Jones vs. Miocic pairing, UFC interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall was the man on everyone’s mind throughout the UFC 309 fight week in New York. White was now adamant he would deliver the world a unification bout between Aspinall and Jones in the next calendar year.
“I’d say 100%, yeah,” White told the gathered media after the UFC’s final event of 2024, when asked if he could guarantee Aspinall would get a chance at unifying the heavyweight titles against Jones in 2025.
It’s important to remember Jones made no secret of his position.
In the aftermath of UFC 309, after a week when Jones constantly threw water on the fan base’s burning desire to see him face Aspinall, Jones succumbed to the inquiries and claimed he would sign on the dotted line — but only when his conditions were met.
“If I give him the opportunity to fight me, I want to be so compensated,” Jones said. “I want to say it — I want that ‘f*** you’ money, honestly. That’s just what it is.”
Yet, with no positive word from the champion since, and frustrated sources within the Aspinall camp insisting there is still no agreement in place, is it time to start worrying about the most anticipated MMA bout of the year?
Changing tune
Uncrowned’s staff unanimously voted Jones vs. Aspinall as its most wanted fight of 2025, but was also unanimous in its sentiments that the efforts to deliver the fight could become a saga. In early January, when discussing when we could start worrying about the contest not coming to fruition, Chuck Mindenhall and I agreed that if there had been no positive word by the time UFC London rolled around in March, the writing would be on the wall.
Alas, we didn’t have to wait that long.
Doubts began to sprout the same week when Joe Rogan declared Jones wanted $30 million to make it happen. He then walked the statement back and insisted the heavyweight champion was considering retirement.
By the time UFC 311 came around, White’s 100% guarantee had some wind knocked out of its sails. Despite still insisting he was “very confident” the UFC would get a deal done, White noted difficulties to the same media convoy that listened to his guarantee less than a month prior.
“Nothing is holding it up,” said White. “It’s just a matter of getting it done. It’s not as easy to put these types of fights together as people think. They take time. We’ll get it done.”
Another siren sounded when White declared Islam Makhachev the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world after UFC 311, despite a year’s worth of previous debates in which he’d loudly and adamantly declared Jones would command that status “as long as he is fighting.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it to [Makhachev],” White said at the UFC 311 post-fight press conference following Makhachev’s win over Renato Moicano.
“Are you happy? Is everybody happy now?”
In recent weeks, White took things a step further when he admitted to The Mac Life that the division will have to move on if Jones hasn’t committed to the fight by the summer.
“One hundred percent,” White said when asked if there was a possibility Jones would be stripped of the title. “If we don’t get the fight done, we move on, and we make another fight.”
The blame game
Throughout the UFC’s previous heavyweight title saga, we saw blame get passed from Jones to Ngannou. Who was standing in the way of the blockbuster clash being made? That depended on when you asked.
In 2021, after Ngannou claimed the heavyweight title against Miocic, White quipped that Jones might consider a move down to 185 pounds after seeing the Cameroonian’s stellar performance. Jones had expressed via social media the financials for the fight would have to be right, but White rebuffed his stance, suggesting he simply didn’t want the smoke.
“I could sit here all day and tell you what ‘show me the money’ means,” White infamously said after UFC 260.
“I tell you guys this all time, you can say you want to fight somebody, but do you really want to? I promise you, we can ask Derrick Lewis and one of these other heavyweights, and they want the fight. If Jon Jones wants the fight, Jon Jones knows he can get the fight. All he’s got to do is call and do it.”
Three years later, White’s tune changed completely. He declared that it was, in fact, Ngannou who’d ran from the UFC and ducked the Jones fight — an obvious and farcical about-face for all who watched the saga play out in real-time.
The promotion simply cannot allow another generational heavyweight matchup slip through its fingers as the UFC did with Ngannou and Jones. White is correct in his assessment that a meeting between Jones and Aspinall is the biggest fight that can be made and is likely the biggest heavyweight fight in UFC history. If that’s the case, there should be no hesitation in paying a man White considers the greatest fighter of all time an unprecedented purse to get it over the line.
However, hopes of the fight happening are dwindling within Team Aspinall, sources indicated to Uncrowned, as Jones remains silent and the interim champion continues to wait for the call to cement a date for the only fight that matters in the UFC’s heavyweight division.
