“I now have a fight, which will get announced. Unfortunately, that’s not my job but at least we’ve got a date, we’ve got an opponent to work towards. Everything’s good. Very happy with that. I can finally get my career going again.” Tom Aspinall, during a recent conversation with Adam Catterall, affirmed that the heavyweight division was finally moving after Jon Jones announced his retirement. However, two weeks after his announcement, the former heavyweight champion announced his return to the testing pool.

“Just re-entered the testing pool, that lasted for about two weeks. Figured we’d keep everyone’s options open,” Jones wrote in the X post, hinting at his return. His intention? It was to compete on the White House grounds. And that seemingly overshadowed the current heavyweight champion’s next battle. Nevertheless, Chael Sonnen had an announcement to make about Aspinall’s next bout. 

Taking to his YouTube channel, ‘The Bad Guy’ said, “All of a sudden comes the day when Jon vacates the title, leaves the sport, gets removed from the testing pool. Then there’s 13 mysterious days which we do not know what happened in those 13 days. We do know what didn’t happen. We do know nowhere in those 13 days publicly was Tom Aspinall given a fight. And I got to word it like that because I believe that Tom and his next fight. No, I believe they’re signed. I believe they even have a date.”

So, when can we expect to witness the British heavyweight’s 10th fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship? And where would the fight materialize? Chael Sonnen continued, “I believe that date is gonna be November of this year in a location of Madison Square Garden. I believe those things. It hasn’t been revealed to us.”

But is Tom Aspinall going to fight Jon Jones? While that’s something that we all wish for, it’s not the likely matchup for the Briton. According to many reports, the heavyweight champion is expected to go up against Ciryl Gane next. And Aspinall getting a new opponent was apparently the reason behind Jones’ return, as per Michael Bisping. 

Michael Bisping blames Tom Aspinall for the reason behind Jon Jones’ unexpected return

Many fans believed that the opportunity to fight at the White House was the motivation behind the former heavyweight champion’s return to the testing pool. But ‘The Count’ had a completely different opinion about this. On his YouTube channel, he said, “All that stuff going on, all the distractions, being out in Thailand, maybe partying, waking up hungover, and thought, you know what I can’t deal with a f— fight camp, right?”

The former middleweight champion further weighed in on Jones’ activity on X. He continued, “He’s gone straight and narrow. He’s got his s— together, he’s thinking straight and clean. And it’s like, you know what? Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of money coming in from this lawsuit, but I am leaving a lot of money on the table.”

And the blame was, of course, on the Brit. Bisping went on, “And maybe now, because Tom has got a new opponent right? There’s going to be more footage on him, there’s going to be more tape to study. There’s going to be a potential for Tom to get beat, for him to have more miles on the clock and he can come out and fight the winner…”

Even Israel Adesanya was of a similar opinion. According to the two-time middleweight champion, “I think he’ll go through this and then come back. It’s just the drama of it… I think he’ll fight Tom [Aspinall]. It’ll even be bigger by the time he comes back because Tom would have had, like, two fights or three fights and built up his own legacy.”

Even with the speculations from Bisping, Adesanya, and Sonnen, we’d still have to wait for UFC officials to make things official for Tom Aspinall. Till then, we can only dream of watching the heavyweight champion in action against the top heavyweight contenders that UFC has to offer.