In March 2025, the UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones stepped in as a co-owner of Dirty Boxing Championship, together with founder Mike Perry and managers Malki and Abe Kawa. Their goal is very clear: open up a striking-first lane where the clinch is the main battlefield, and fighters cannot escape by using distance or stalling. Dirty Boxing has always been associated with this raw and rough flavor that standard MMA cannot fully duplicate. It gets rid of long grappling sequences and traps fighters in a phone-booth war, collar ties, short hooks, clinch hand-fighting, ground and pound, elbows, and a ruleset that is intended to keep everything upright and suffocating.

It is made for the fans who want nothing less than pure chaos without the wrestlers’ slowdown, a pressure-cooker version of combat that never really allows the pace to dip. That is the very energy the Dirty Boxing Championship is trying to capture. The promotion held a pilot event last November with Yoel Romero as the main attraction and Andrei Arlovski in one of the supporting matches. Thus, the fans got an early chance to see how the format works with veteran firepower.

Jon Jones subtly pushes towards Dirty Boxing

For quite some time, Jon Jones has been quietly suggesting dirty boxing techniques. It looks as if he is intentionally and cleverly creating the atmosphere for the fighters to be united in his co-owned establishment.

Recently, he circled back to the topic and slipped in another effortless plug time during a debate about whether wrestling-heavy MMA is “boring.” Instead of arguing, he just pointed fans toward his favorite alternative, dropping the line: “If you love MMA, but don’t appreciate the ground game, give dirty boxing a try. It’s electric! Refreshing, different.”

Jones’ view is not totally wrong. Just checking the UFC’s first-class fighters almost in every weight category reveals the same thing: wrestling and grappling have turned out to be the main skills for winning fights at the top levels. The audience might describe it as slow or even “boring,” but the victories prove that the fighters are performing well. Islam Makhachev’s UFC 322 win and Khamzat Chimaev’s UFC 319 win were high-level fights. Yet, the grappling-heavy nature earned them the ‘boring’ tag.

Even the elite strikers who are coming from other disciplines find it hard to cope if their wrestling defense does not keep up. The sport has naturally progressed in that direction, though the spectators might dislike the way it is done. Meanwhile, on the fighting front, Jones’ attention remains on one specific location and one specific opponent.

Jon Jones sets his sights on Alex Pereira, not Tom Aspinall

Dana White did not mince his words when he was questioned about the participation of Jon Jones in the UFC’s June 14 White House event, saying that the heavyweight champion is “not the guy you can rely on for something like that”. Jones has already had the meeting door shut on him and has now turned his attention to a different target, which he is making impossible to overlook in his next move. That target is Alex Pereira. On the Geoffrey Woo podcast, Jones did not hesitate to welcome the battle notion.

He laid it out like a man who is already watching the tape and stated, “With Pereira, I’d have to be wise. I would have to utilize what’s right in front of me… Pereira is very much caught in a particular way of fighting… my responsibility would be to locate the weaknesses within those habits.”

But underneath the technicality was the ace of the hook: legacy. “The guy says only Chama. No one knows what it means, but he has that ‘IT’ factor,” said Jones. “The vibe he carries with him will be remembered not just five years from now.” Jones is not only after a victory over Pereira, he also desires to be a part of history with him.

And while Jones was excited about the prospect of facing Pereira, Tom Aspinall was given the opposite treatment. In the same clip, he was referred to as a “bully fighter” by Jones, who then expressed his disinterest. For the time being, all indications are pointing in one direction: Jones is not after Aspinall. He is set on Pereira and is already acting as if that fight is the most significant one.