When the main event of UFC 321 came to an abrupt halt in Abu Dhabi, confusion swept through the Etihad Arena. Tom Aspinall, fighting for the first time as the undisputed heavyweight champion, couldn’t continue after Ciryl Gane’s eye poke, leaving fans stunned and booing. What was meant to be his coronation turned into chaos with a no-contest and no validation for a champion who’d waited years to prove himself.

And while Aspinall’s night ended in heartbreak, Jon Jones didn’t miss the opportunity to add salt to the wound. The former champion, now preparing for his rumored return at the historic UFC White House event, has made it clear that Aspinall isn’t on his radar. Instead, his eyes are on Alex Pereira. But as a newly surfaced clip shows, Jones’s criticisms of the Brit go much deeper than post-fight trolling!

Jon Jones’ jab at Tom Aspinall resurfaces amidst UFC 321’s controversial ending

Shared by Happy Punch on Instagram, the viral clip features Jones in an unreleased interview recorded six months ago. In it, ‘Bones’ doesn’t mince words when talking about Aspinall’s fighting spirit as he states, “I’ll be interested to see if he wins his next fight. There’s a video that hasn’t gone viral, but one of his losses, he was very much an adult, I believe already a black belt, and he was taken down, and the guy twisted his ankle. He had no defense; he tapped so quickly,”

Then came the comparison that caught everyone’s attention. “I had a fight where I got arm-barred, and I was literally willing to let somebody break my arm before giving up,” Jones said, referring to his near-submission against Vitor Belfort at UFC 152. “With Tom, the moment he felt any pressure on his ankle, he tapped immediately, which lets me know a lot about him.”

Tom Aspinall’s first professional loss came long before he entered the UFC spotlight. Back then, he was a promising prospect competing in the regional circuit, still sharpening his craft. The tap Jones mentioned was against Stuart Austin in 2015, a fight that ended due to a heel hook submission. Yet in the years since, Aspinall’s record has been nearly spotless. Aside from a freak knee injury in 2022 and an eerily similar DQ loss due to downward elbows as Jones, against Lukasz Parobiec in 2016, he’s never shown a hint of quitting.

Still, Jones seems to have been watching closely. As his interview indicates, even before UFC 321, he’d been studying Aspinall’s early fights, perhaps preparing for a matchup that fans have long wanted. But when the moment came to call out his would-be rival, Jones instead turned his focus elsewhere. “Alex, I’d be down to bring the highest skill level to the White House,” Jones posted on X after the event, nodding to Alex Pereira‘s recent challenge.

So, from changing his profile picture to a duck with an eye patch to now having old footage surface, Jones’s psychological warfare against Tom Aspinall continues. It’s classic ‘Bones’, with mind games, provocation, and the art of narrative control. Whatever the motive, the timing of the video couldn’t have been worse for the British heavyweight. Fresh off a controversial no-contest and facing public scrutiny, the last thing he needed was the sport’s greatest champion calling him a quitter. Still, there is one man who is coming to his defense!

Chael Sonnen clears the air on his Aspinall comments and backs him up

If Jon Jones aimed to question Tom Aspinall‘s heart, Chael Sonnen wasn’t having any of it. The fallout from UFC 321 has been nothing short of explosive, with fans divided, fighters opinionated, and the champion caught in the middle of it all. But when everyone seemed ready to pile on, one of MMA’s most outspoken voices stepped in to say what few dared: Aspinall did nothing wrong.

On The Ariel Helwani Show, Chael Sonnen broke it down with his trademark bluntness as he stated, “Tom did nothing wrong. Ciryl caused the action, and I also find myself looking at the referee. I also feel that the no-contest is a cop-out.”

He wasn’t finished there as he continued, “We only have two rules in this sport. You don’t bite the guy, and you don’t poke the son of a b**** in his eye. That’s the only rules that we have that can tie back to 1993, and when one of those is violated, I am like you — there is not room for this discussion. There is not room for [whether a foul was] incidental and accidental, particularly when it was a double [eye-poke].”

Interestingly, Sonnen isn’t alone in this. His broadcast partner, Anthony Smith, once faced Jon Jones himself in 2019, when an illegal knee nearly handed him the title by DQ. Back then, Smith chose to continue.

Yet, this weekend, he and Sonnen caught criticism for initially suggesting Aspinall should’ve done the same, but in his appearance on Helwani’s show, ‘The Bad Guy’ clarified, “[Smith and I] did not think that Tom found a way out or was ducking out… One guy is trying to swell up your eye or cause some blood to get in there to affect your vision, you’ve got to push through that. That was the tone that we were speaking of, not that actual moment with Tom. We did not think that Tom found a way out or was ducking out.”

So, the saga between Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall feels less like a rivalry and more like a battle of narratives. Jones, ever the master of psychological warfare, paints Aspinall as a man who folds under pressure, reaching back nearly a decade to question his toughness. Sonnen, on the other hand, flips that script entirely, casting Aspinall as a victim of circumstance, wronged by an opponent’s foul and an indecisive system. Two veterans, two interpretations, and one confused fan base left wondering: who’s really right? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!