Today is April 29, 2025. A normal date in the life of any MMA fan. Except, it isn’t a normal day at all. But why? Well, Tom Aspinall broke an infamous record as he officially surpassed Renan Barao in the list of the longest reigning interim champions in UFC history at 535 days. Nor the proudest day for the UFC if you ask us! The world was asking this question after UFC 295, the world revolted after UFC 309, and the world is now desperate ahead of UFC 317. Call it ducking, call it strategy, or call it mental chess! The bottom line is that the Englishman hasn’t received his chance to unify the gold against Jon Jones.

Well, Dana White would say yes if you ask him about this bout. But the MMA community increasingly thinks not. Aspinall, of course, is the interim heavyweight champion of the heavyweight division, where Jones is the ‘undisputed’ champ. So Jones fighting Aspinall should be a no-brainer, right?

Well, apparently, it isn’t. ‘Bones’, of course, had asked for ‘f—k you money’ to face the Englishman. And Ariel Helwani has recently claimed that the UFC has met the New Mexico resident’s financial demands, which, if true, just means Jones just doesn’t want to fight the young and hungry generational talent. The wool is slowly beginning to come off the MMA community’s eyes, too, as well-regarded coach Din Thomas revealed why he thinks Jones will never fight Aspinall.

“There’s no way Jon Jones accepts that fight. Here’s the thing: he says he needs more time to prepare. I mean, it’s not like he didn’t know about this for the last two years. Like, he knew before the Stipe fight that he’d eventually have to fight Tom Aspinall,” he said. Jones, according to Helwani, had asked for six months to prepare for the fight. And Thomas feels that is just an excuse for Jones to eventually say no to the fight.

“How has he not been preparing for this if he had any idea in his head that he was gonna have this fight? Like, he has to be ready in his head that this was gonna happen. So the more and more time that passes, the more and more I think Jon is just stringing us along and may never take this fight,” Thomas added.

The keyword being ‘may’. We do not know for certain either way. Jones is doing the worst thing that he can, which is keeping everyone in the dark. We do not know either way if the fight is going to happen or not. This has held up the entire heavyweight division and means that Aspinall cannot fight someone else either. And the Englishman’s dad, Andy Aspinall, is extremely ticked off.

Tom Aspinall’s father thinks it’s ‘stupid ‘ that the UFC is letting Jon Jones delay taking a decision

“It’s stupid. I have no idea the reason why the UFC don’t really want Tom to fight anybody else other than Jon Jones. They’re saying, ‘Stay tuned.’ That’s the message they wanted Tom to give out to people. We’re in April now, still waiting for [Jones] to say, I’ll have a fight or I’ll not have a fight. And I don’t really understand that. He’s a fighter who should be having fights. Why is [Jones] still sitting around not giving an answer as to whether he’s going to fight or not?” Tom Aspinall’s father, Andy, said on his son’s YouTube channel recently.

And that, in a nutshell, is exactly what the fans and even Din Thomas feel. After all, Jones either wants to fight Aspinall or he does not. Either way, there is no reason for him to keep stringing people around. Indeed, things did look promising at one stage, as Aspinall told Ariel Helwani that “big news incoming” after meeting with UFC matchmaker Hunter Campbell in March.

But alas, it seems there actually is no big news incoming at the moment. So what does that mean? Well, Dana White has promised that if Jones doesn’t agree to fight Aspinall in a respectable time frame, the UFC will move on. Which means ‘Bones’ will be stripped, and either Aspinall will be promoted to undisputed status, or will have to fight someone, probably Ciryl Gane, for the vacant undisputed title. What do you think about Din Thomas’ take on Jon Jones dragging his feet on the Aspinall fight?