What else can Tom Aspinall do to get Jon Jones to fight him? That is the question Aspinall’s father has for Dana White and the UFC. The Englishman, of course, is the interim heavyweight UFC champion, while Jones holds the ‘undisputed’ belt. And if there is one thing you can say for sure about combat sports, it’s that there can only be one champion in one division.

If you have an interim champion, you fight the champion. Simple as that. Anything else is just wrong. What you don’t do is fight another guy, who, by the way, is 42, and way past his prime, and then drag your feet about fighting the interim, who is desperate to fight you. That is exactly why Tom Aspinall and, more importantly, his father, Andy, are mad at Dana White and co., calling their decision to let Jones hold up the Aspinall fight ‘stupid’.

“Yeah, of course I do [understand why the fans are frustrated at the delay]. 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, and, you know, they’re saying stay tuned. That’s the message they wanted Tom to give out to people, and we had the meeting with Hunter, and they’re going to try and fix the fight with Jon Jones. But we’re still in April now, still waiting for this guy to say ‘I’ll have a fight or I’ll not have a fight,'” Andy said on Tom’s official YouTube channel.

Indeed, Aspinall and his father had met UFC matchmaker Hunter Campbell in London in March, after which the interim champ was “very optimistic” about the fight being done. He had even promised “big news” while speaking to Ariel Helwani after the meeting. But things seem not to have progressed at all since then. Jones has still not agreed to fight Aspinall, and Dana White is still promising the fight will definitely happen. This has understandably frustrated and annoyed Tom and Andy.

“And I don’t really understand that he’s a fighter who should be having fights. Why is he just still sat around not giving an answer as to whether he’s going to fight or not? Tom’s done all he can, you know. He’s fought in the middle of the night to defend an interim. He fought for an interim because the fight was on for him to do an interim. And he couldn’t turn it down, and he won that. What else can he do?” The elder Aspinall asked with exasperation. Thankfully, Dana White also spoke about the fight in a recent press conference, which sheds some light on the status of the fight.

Dana White reveals status of Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall mega-fight

“Everything you hear is bull—t until we say it. I’ve said it many times, that’s [Jones-Aspinall is] the fight we want to make this year. Still super confident [that the fight will happen],” UFC CEO Dana White said after the UFC Kansas City card last weekend. The ‘bull—t’ White was referencing was probably UFC analyst and former superstar Chael Sonnen claiming that the fight had been finalized.

Not to mention, the UFC CEO’s statement makes it seem like the fight had indeed not been finalized. After all, White said he is confident the fight will happen, which clearly means it isn’t a done deal yet. Not to mention his latest statement is a climb down from what he said a couple of months ago, when he said the Jones-Aspinall super-fight was “done but not done.” Jones, of course, has asked for ‘f–k you money’ to fight the interim champ.

And it seems the UFC is perhaps not willing to meet ‘Bones’s financial expectations. Or maybe, just maybe, they have agreed to give Jones the tens of millions of dollars he was asking for, and the undisputed champ just doesn’t want to fight Aspinall. What do you think about Tom Aspinall’s father’s thoughts on the UFC letting Jon Jones drag his feet on their fight?